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A VISION OF THE FUTURE 





















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RICHARD MARVIN CHAPMAN 



A Vision of The 
Future 

By 

RICHARD MARVIN CHAPMAN 



THE COSMOPOLITAN PRESS 
440 Fourth Avenue, New York 
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Copyright, 1916, by 
The Cosmopolitan Press 



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JAN 18 1917 


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V 


I 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Preface . 7 

Chapter— 

I The Nativity. 14 

II The Nursery. 31 

III The Kindergarten. 43 

IV The School. 57 

V The College. 65 

VI The Business. 72 

VII The Isolation. 79 

VIII The Contact. 95 

IX The Genealogy. 106 

X The Propaganda. 116 







































PREFACE 


The two chief causes of human misery are 
poverty and the perversion of the sexual relation. 
While both have been in turn attributed to drunk¬ 
enness, it is an open question which is the cause 
and which is the effect. The preponderance of 
evidence is, that while they aggravate each other, 
they are nevertheless quite independent and each 
presents a problem peculiar to itself. 

If by happy chance some person discovers how 
to abolish poverty without violating the rights of 
property, and how to exterminate the social evil 
by simply making it impossible, as well as remov¬ 
ing all temptation without endangering the orderly 
perpetuation of the race, it would seem to be the 
duty of such person to speak and tell his or her 
vision. 

This work was prompted by a concrete idea or 
vision of the kind described. At the outset it 
presented no apparent inconsistencies and seemed 
to increase in plausibility and structural coherency 
with each unfolding of the argument. 

The idea had such a high value as a matter of 
entertaining speculation and the lines of thought 
were so vivid in my mind that there seemed to be 

7 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


no logical alternative but to write it down. This 
was done with such ease, speed and relish that I 
now regard it as fully compensating me for what 
labor it entailed, irrespective of any practical re¬ 
sults that may follow in consequence. 

The difficulty in selecting a title was that of 
choosing between one and another of a bewilder¬ 
ing number, all of which appeared equally suit¬ 
able. As each one of the ten chapters was writ¬ 
ten, it, in turn, seemed to contain the essential idea 
and so it did with respect to the ideas that fol¬ 
lowed in the succeeding chapters. Each chapter 
therefore composes an indispensable background 
for those that follow, while the first chapter, “The 
Nativity,” is the background for them all. Ac¬ 
cordingly the first chapter must be mastered to 
better enjoy what follows. 

Taking then the titles first considered in the 
order of the chapters that suggested them, we 
have: 

1. The Identification of the Individual. 

2. The Science of Motherhood. 

3. The Acquisition of the Faculties. 

4. The Guarantee of a Career. 

5. Finding One’s Level. 

6. The Abolition of Poverty. 

7. The Extermination of the Social Evil. 

8. The Propagation of the Human Species. 

9. The Family Tree. 

10. The Making of the Millennium. 

It was soon apparent that, although all of the 
above titles were pertinent to the story, they each 


PREFACE 


9 


related to but one angle of the idea. I therefore 
discarded them all for the more comprehensive 
and all-including title which I have selected, 
namely: 

A VISION OF THE FUTURE 

The dominating idea is the paramount impor¬ 
tance of the individual person, the justice of pro¬ 
tecting each and every one of them from the 
moment of conception to the final dissolution and 
the wisdom of keeping them throughout the 
whole period, under expert observation and au¬ 
thoritative restraint. The cultivation of their 
bodily and mental faculties to the full is a nat¬ 
ural corollary to the foregoing idea. 

There is as much need for inspecting and regu¬ 
lating a person as there is for inspecting and 
regulating an institution. 

The coming of the flying machine has broken 
all our standards concerning the limitations of 
possibility. There is a revival of unrest and a 
rebellion against precedent. We can now go as 
far as we like in the boldness of our faith and in 
the originality of our proposals. 

On all sides we hear references to better 
babies, child hygiene, “eugenic marriages,” and 
the scientific institutional regulation of this, that 
and the other thing in connection with the family 
relations and details of social order. 

The schools are expanding their functions in 
many ways. Economy, efficiency, standardiza¬ 
tion, research and publicity and similar words 


IO 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


looking to radical reforms in the ways of living 
are familiar words on everybody’s lips. The 
psychological moment seems to have come to 
evolve new ideals and get a hearing. 

The newer the idea, the more attentive the 
audience. It is no longer possible to scare the 
people with a new thought. It only interests them. 

The time has come to take the next step. To 
put a new motion before the house. Accordingly 
I move that: 

Whereas, To justify our involuntary entrance 
into existence we have the right to be spared all 
deforming, maddening and destroying agony and 
not be made to end our days in the hospital or 
in the madhouse without a fair chance for hap¬ 
piness; and 

Whereas, Whenever such end comes to any 
person at any time, so far as such person is con¬ 
cerned, the injustice is no less than if it came to 
every person all the time; and 

Whereas, It is in the power of the human race, 
by virtue of its knowledge and control over phy¬ 
sical and moral forces to bring justice on the 
earth, now therefore be it 

Resolved That every person brought into the 
world, by right of the laws and necessities of 
human nature and the power of the social body 
to grant, is entitled to each and every one of the 
following essential and fundamental opportunities, 
collectively constituting the 

HUMAN BILL OF RIGHTS, namely— 


PREFACE 


11 

1. To have those qualities of mind and body 
that are derived from healthy and rational parents, 
who love each other and sustain the proper psy¬ 
chological attitude of consorts. 

2. To be protected from prenatal harm the sine 
qua non of which is the well being and happiness 
of the mother during gestation and the attendance 
of skillful and loyal physicians and nurses at the 
birth, in a sanitary and properly appointed 
chamber. 

3. To have such environment and provision 
for comfort and entertainment as will promote 
the health and enjoyment of the mother during 
the period of nursing at the breast. 

4. To have food, clothing and shelter during 
the entire period of dependance and development, 
the food to be selected by a competent dietitian 
and suited to the needs of the growing child. The 
clothing to fulfill all the requirements of climate 
and becoming drapery and the shelter to conform 
to the established standards of sanitation and 
attractiveness. 

5. To be groomed, trained, educated and cor¬ 
rected by kind and capable nurses, teachers and 
specialists and thereby to acquire such understand¬ 
ing and skill as will develop to the utmost any 
native genius and give the full use of all bodily 
and mental powers and faculties. 

6. To be independent of the resources, capaci¬ 
ties or inclinations of parents or guardians for 
necessities of bringing up and therefore to live 
under the comforting assurance that no damaging 


12 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


neglect or privation will be suffered while the 
period of dependence lasts. 

7. To have work to do, after reaching maturity, 
of a character that will employ the faculties in 
the lines in which they have developed and been 
trained, which will furnish a sufficient revenue 
whereby to enjoy the creature comforts and neces¬ 
sities and a little more. 

8. To have the love of the opposite sex and 
children upon whom to bestow the natural affec¬ 
tions. To be able to take the interest and feel 
the pride of a parent in the personality, develop¬ 
ment and career of at least one child,.if not several. 

9. To be relieved of all responsibility for the 
support of any other individual, man, woman or 
child, and at the same time be free to give to 
another voluntarily any service or property, when 
prompted by affection or admiration to do so. 

10. To be kindly and abundantly cared and pro¬ 
vided for in an institution constituted for such 
purpose, after being rendered helpless by accident 
or becoming chronically feeble or superannuated. 

That the foregoing advantages are essential to 
human happiness there can be no dispute. Apart 
from the rich and favored few, the deprivation of 
one or all of them is generally felt and especially 
by the poor, who form the vast majority of the 
inhabitants of this planet. 

The diseased and criminal parents, poor and 
insufficient food, dirty and ragged clothes, squalid 
rooms and the shame and crushing mortification 
of poverty, ignorance and physical deformity, are 


PREFACE 


i3 


afflictions that have combined to deface many a 
background on which life’s picture must be painted. 

All this is as unnecessary as it is cruel and heart¬ 
breaking. 

I have undertaken to show in the following 
pages my vision of the things to be done and the 
way and sequence in which to do them. 

As this book is nothing if not prophetic, I have 
assumed for convenience and uniformity of syntax, 
that in the fullness of time the events outlined will 
all happen. I have accordingly used the future 
tense throughout and arrogated to myself the role 
of a seer. 



February 16, 1916. 


CHAPTER I 


THE NATIVITY 

When the time comes, a reformation of human 
procedure will be made possible by a general recog¬ 
nition of the fact that every person has a number 
that can be expressed by twenty-two characters or 
less. It will only remain to determine what each 
person’s number is, to register and identify such 
person at all times and places whenever and wher¬ 
ever such person becomes the subjct of inquiry or 
action. 

This number will be derived in each instance 
from the nativity or time and place of birth. 
This being peculiar to every individual by virtue 
of the law of impenetrability, will be essentially 
personal. 

It will accordingly be composed (using the high¬ 
est figure to illustrate each component and show 
the maximum number of characters necessary), as 
follows: 

Epoch or Century. 20. 

Year of Century and Day of Year. . 99.365 
Hour of Day and Minute of Hour. 23.59 
Latitude in Degrees and Minutes. . 89.59N 
Longitude in Degrees and Minutes . 179.59W 


14 



THE NATIVITY 


i5 

A dot will separate the year from the day, the 
hour from the minute and the degree from the 
minute also. 

As the month of February sometimes has 29 
days, the year will be supposed to have 366 days, 
of which February 29 will be the 60th. 

When there are only 28 days in February, the 
60th day of the year will be omitted, and the 
consecutive dates go from 59 to 61, so that re¬ 
gardless of leap year, March 1st will always be 
the 61 st day of the year and every day will always 
have the same number. 

The hour and minute or the time of birth will 
be either local-standard, local-mean or Greenwich- 
mean time, whichever be fixed upon as the basis 
in each locality. The last will ultimately be the 
one adopted, because most scientific and best for 
comparison. 

The degrees and minutes of latitude and longi¬ 
tude, or place of birth, will be ascertained by pro¬ 
viding institutions definitely located in which all 
births will occur. 

To this end the earth’s surface will be divided 
by parallels of latitude and by meridians of longi¬ 
tude one minute apart, forming districts of ap¬ 
proximately one mile square. Within as many of 
such squares falling upon inhabited country 
(whether continent or island), as the density of 
population may require, there will be erected, 
equipped and maintained birth houses known by 
the latitude and longitude of the district wherein 
they will be located, as follows: 


16 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


(a) All birth houses situated within one minute 
north or south of the equator will be known as 
latitude .ooN or .ooS, while all situated within 
one minute east or west of the Greenwich meridian 
will be known as longitude .ooE or .ooW, as the 
case may be. 

(b) All birth houses situated within two min¬ 
utes of the equator and at a greater distance than 
one minute therefrom, will be known as latitude 
.oiN or .01S. All situated within two minutes 
of the Greenwich meridian and at a greater dis¬ 
tance than one minute therefrom, will be known 
as longitude .01E or .01W, as the case may be. 

(c) The latitude and longitude of each birth 
house will therefore be the nearest even minute 
parallel between it and the equator, and the 
nearest even minute meridian between it and 
Greenwich, whether said parallel and meridian 
lines be 1,000 yards distant or pass along one of its 
boundaries. All buildings erected for birth houses 
within the same district will constitute one institu¬ 
tion known by the latitude and longitude of said 
district as described. 

Commencing at the equator, every district will 
be one nautical mile (2,029 yds.) square, and as 
they approach either pole and the distance between 
the meridians decreases, they will become more 
oblong. 

In large cities extending more than a mile in 
any direction it will be convenient to have two or 
more birth houses occupying different districts and 
situated on the outskirts or within the limits of the 


THE NATIVITY 


i7 


city, wherever suitable sites can be obtained. Each 
institution will pre-empt a considerable part of the 
district area and the part not occupied by buildings 
will be parked and forested to provide suitable 
approaches, surroundings and gardens to the edi¬ 
fices within its confines. 

Besides the necessary offices, storerooms, 
kitchens, laundries and living quarters for the 
staff of clerks, physicians, nurses, housekeepers 
and their subordinates, each establishment will 
contain fully furnished and equipped, private 
chambers in requisite number to reserve one for 
each expectant mother. She will take up her 
temporary residence therein, on the first decisive 
manifestation and there remain until fully recu¬ 
perated from the birth of the child. 

There will also be general parlors, music rooms, 
libraries, dining-rooms and lounging rooms for the 
comfort of inmates at times when confinement in 
their private chambers would be irksome. Also 
surrounding parks and gardens in which to enjoy 
the sun and air in the open, until such time as it 
is unsafe to venture too far from the scene of the 
approaching advent. At all times, however, from 
the moment the expectant mother takes possession 
of her reservation, she will be under the constant 
observation and care of attending nurses and be 
in every way shielded from any possible harm, 
annoyance or discomfort. 

Such institution will be conducted at the public 
expense so that every mother, regardless of re¬ 
sources or race will have the benefits of its com- 


18 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


forts and facilities. Until the permanent and uni¬ 
versal adoption of such plan, there will be a rev¬ 
enue from pay patients. Accommodations suf¬ 
ficiently sumptuous and pretentious beyond the 
actual requirements will be provided for such pay 
patients. This will cause them to feel special con¬ 
sideration and preferment, in return for a scale 
of charges supplemented by such voluntary con¬ 
tributions or endowments as it will be the custom 
for the wealthy to make. Their contributions 
accordingly will be in support of the institution 
in which their children were born and from which 
they derived their identification or nativity 
numbers. 

Every birth as it takes place in the private cham¬ 
ber reserved therefor, will be reported forthwith 
at the central office of the institution. Such report 
will be on a prescribed form, signed by the attend¬ 
ing physician and nurse. This form upon being 
received will at once have imprinted thereon the 
date, hour and minute, by means of a clock dating 
and timing stamp. It will then be placed on file in 
chronological order. 

These forms will be currently entered in a bound 
book of suitable size (using pen and ink) by an 
expert handwriter in charge of said volume. This 
volume will be fifty lines deep. Each birth record 
or registration will occupy one line across the 
entire folio, which is the left and right page as 
the book lies open. This will make fifty entries 
as each new leaf is turned over, less such lines as 


THE NATIVITY 


i9 


are used for daily rests or periodical recapitula¬ 
tions of totals as will be explained. 

Each book will relate exclusively to the particu¬ 
lar latitude and longitude of the institution wherein 
it is kept. Also to the current calendar year. 
Therefore each specific birth record will commence 
by entry of the day, hour and minute in succeeding 
columnar spaces. After this, will follow in order 
the name of the mother and of the father, and a 
space reserved for the name of the child which 
will be entered therein when known. This will 
complete and fill the left hand page. 

On this same line and on the right hand page 
will first be five columns headed by Roman num¬ 
erals. These columns will denote the five main 
races. They will also form squares or spaces on 
each line, viz.: 

I. The Caucasian or White Race. 

II. The Malay or Brown Race. 

III. The Indian or Red Race. 

IV. The Mongolian or Yellow Race. 

V. The Negro or Black Race. 

In one or the other of these spaces will be drawn 
a line diagonally across the square. 

The recorded minute of hour of birth will, if 
a girl, be the nearest odd minute (31.33*35, etc.), 
and if a boy, the nearest even minute (0.32.34.36, 
etc.), to the time stamped on the reports. 

Twins and triplets will follow in order as if 
reported from different chambers at intervals of 
at least one or two minutes, according as they are 
of opposite or like sex. 


20 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


Each birth in the same institution will have 
its own and exclusive minute number in the re¬ 
ported order of birth, whether odd or even. Two 
or more births, if reported during the minute after 
6.30 and before 6.31 will be recorded, if girls, as 
3 1 * 33> 35> etc -> . and if boys, as 32, 34, 36, etc. 
Should another birth be reported during the next 
succeeding minute, it will be recorded as of the 
next clear minute, 37 or x, etc. 

For the same purpose, i. e., of distinguishing 
sex, the diagonal line drawn in the race column 
will, if a girl, slant from left top to right bottom, 
and if a boy, from right top to left bottom, so 
that they can be added separately for each day. 
The sum of the births of each sex of each race, 
making ten sums in all, can be set down and the 
sum of the sums or grand sums, can be proven 
to the total number of births of all kinds regis¬ 
tered on the same day. 

The race of each child will be that of the parent 
furthest removed from the Caucasian, regardless 
of sex, so that the child of parents I and II will 
be II, or of parents II and III will be III, and so 
on. 

After the race-columns, the remaining unused 
space of the right hand page will be reserved for 
ultimately closing the record. 

This will be accomplished by recording the lati¬ 
tude, longitude and date of death. The death 
may be either at or shortly after birth or not 
until reported at some remote date and from some 
distant place, as the case may be. All the deaths 


THE NATIVITY 


21 


will be reported to the nearest birth house and 
from there reported to the native birth house if 
known, for closing of the birth record as will 
appear. 

The birth record of each day will be typewrit¬ 
ten upon a sheet and placed in a loose leaf binder, 
which will be retained as a working copy to bear 
the wear and tear of current use. One or more 
carbon copies will be made for transmitting the 
information to such county, state or national 
bureau of vital statistics as may be established for 
purposes of compilation, census, etc. 

Coincident with the registration of each birth, 
tw r o identification cards of different sizes and 
colors will be filled out with the name, number 
and race. These cards will be placed in separate 
racks in pigeon holes of the same depth and width 
as the card, with the floor sloping slightly down¬ 
ward and inward and the rear wall slanting slightly 
backward. Each pigeon hole will have a scale on 
the side, graduated to the exact thickness of the 
card so that as the cards lay one upon the other, 
the exact number of cards in each pigeon hole 
can be read at once from the scale. 

In one color of cards and rack of pigeon holes 
there will be a separate pigeon hole or compart¬ 
ment for each sex of each race. By removing 
therefrom the cards of all persons reported dead, 
the cards in the rack will always show the number 
of living persons who were born and registered 
in the district, and who they are. 

In the other color of cards and rack of pigeon 


22 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


holes, the same arrangement will obtain with the 
exception that it will be repeated for each locality 
for which a separate census is desired. As fast 
as changes of residence are reported, these cards 
will be removed from the pigeon holes of the old 
localities to the pigeon noles of the new localities 
or addresses. Upon report of death these cards 
will also be taken from the rack. 

There will also be maintained for each person 
registered a portfolio or container in which to 
put all advices, portraits and other documents con¬ 
cerning such person. These personal portfolios 
will be kept on file and the register of births will 
be the index to the file. 

On each birthday all the registered persons will 
have standard size photograph portraits taken of 
full and side face. These, together with advices 
of their respective addresses and occupations, they 
will transmit to their respective nativity district or 
birth houses. On receipt at the birth house of 
such advice and portrait of each person, it will 
be placed in such person’s own portfolio. The 
position of the card in the residence file will then 
be either confirmed or the card will be transferred 
to the compartment corresponding to the new 
address. The personal portfolio will therefore 
be located by the nativity number or order of 
filing. The residence card will be located in the 
rack by the last advice filed in the personal port¬ 
folio. 

All deaths of registered persons will be re¬ 
ported on a prescribed form or document to the 


THE NATIVITY 


23 


nearest birth house or the one most accessible to 
the place of death. Such house alone will be 
authorized to inspect the corpse and issue the 
burial or incineration permit necessary to dispose 
of the remains. 

The local birth house to which such report is 
made will thereupon enter in a local death register 
the day, hour and minute on which notice of death 
was received (per clock stamps), the nativity 
number of the deceased and all other pertinent 
facts. In turn the local birth house will notify 
the decedent’s native birth house (which may be 
either the same, i. e., their own or another institu¬ 
tion) by transmitting thereto the original docu¬ 
ment or notice. 

Upon receipt of such notice by the native birth 
house, it will also make an entry in a native death 
register, recording substantially the same facts as 
those entered in the local death register in the 
district to which the death was first reported. 

The entry in the native register will also be 
posted to the register of births by making the 
proper notations against the original birth record, 
using the notification form as the posting medium. 
Said form will then be placed in the private port¬ 
folio of the deceased. The portfolio will also 
contain the birth notice and all intervening ad¬ 
vices, portraits and other documents hereinafter 
described. 

The portfolio will then be removed from the 
files. It may then be either given to the relatives, 
if any, or to some historical society, if the person 


24 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


was celebrated. Otherwise it will go to the 
lumber room for final destruction after ioo years, 
if no request for its possession has been received 
in the meantime. 

When this system of cards and registers is in¬ 
stalled, there will be compiled from the daily re¬ 
ports of all organized districts, a census of the 
registered population. The birth and death rates 
will be noted and the increases and decreases, as 
the case may be, will be analyzed into sex, race, 
locality of birth, locality of residence and all other 
significant distinctions. 

At each recorded birth, a metal tablet about 
three-quarters of an inch square and one-sixty- 
fourth of an inch thick, made of aluminum, silver, 
gold, platinum or alloys thereof, according to 
the wealth of taste of the mother, will have en¬ 
graved or embossed thereon the nativity or iden¬ 
tification number of the baby. The tablet will be 
secured to the baby by a thin chain or tape around 
the neck and worn for identification. 

When the skin of the child is sufficiently tough 
and a statutory time therefore has expired, the 
nativity number, omitting the epoch or century, 
will be indelibly stamped (tatooed) on each side 
just below the armpit and above the belt. This 
will not show under ordinary conditions and yet 
be easily exposed and observed. Instead, how¬ 
ever, of printing or marking said number in Arabic 
characters, which would require to be formed with 
extreme accuracy and still be liable to illegibility, 
the character would be formed by combinations 


THE NATIVITY 


25 

of straight lines about the size and shape of a 
grain of rice in the following manner: 

I 

All registered persons will then be able to prove 
their identities by their nativity numbers recorded 
on the tablets. These tablets they can always 
wear. They can also be identified by the records 
on their bodies under both arms. The latter in 
consequence of being protected by the arm, will 
remain legible in an accident where the body is 
so badly burned or crushed as to be unrecogniz¬ 
able. It will therefore serve to identify the dead 
and make it possible to correctly notify the 
authorities. 

These details will be only the first steps in the 
installation of a system possessing such wonderful 
possibilities and advantages to future generations 
that in spite of strong opposition, it will meet 
with general approval. Accordingly laws will be 
enacted in different places to take effect on stated 
dates. These laws will require that all births shall 
be supervised and recorded in the way just out¬ 
lined. To that end suitable sites will be required 
and suitable buildings will be erected or remod¬ 
eled to meet the requirements. 

In the meantime organized effort will be made 
to spread the practice. Other states and nations 
will join in the plan and enact suitable laws with 


26 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


the same object in view. When the unregistered 
generation has passed away, all countries will have 
adopted the measure and the daily census of the 
registered population will be the census of the 
world. 

Beginning with the first registration of the birth 
of a child of registered parents, a new kind of birth 
register will be operated. 

Each entry will then require three lines, and as 
there will be a clear line between each full entry, 
four lines of the book will be used for each com¬ 
plete birth record. Each folio will contain ten 
such entries and accordingly will be ruled forty 
lines deep and about the same width as the 
previous volume. 

Columns will then be provided to record (a) 
year, (b) day, (c) hour, (d) minute, (e) latitude, 
(f) longitude, and the spaces allotted to each of 
the five races as before explained, after which will 
follow a space for names and lastly a space for 
death record. 

The entry of the child’s birth will occupy the 
first line of each four and be written in a bolder 
hand than the entries of the parents which follow 
on the second and third lines. 

The entry will occupy every one of the columns 
a, b, c, d, e and f, the last two being the same 
for every child but different for every parent, will 
be entered as to each, for purposes of comparison. 

Directly under the entry of the child or on the 
next or second line will be the nativity number of 
the mother as read from her own body, followed 


THE NATIVITY 


27 


by her race, indicated by a horizontal dash in the 
proper columns, and by her name. In the same 
columns on the third line will be entered the 
nativity number of the father and his race and 
name as reported by the mother. The fourth line 
is blank and separates the entry from the one that 
follows. Only the race of the child will be noted 
by a slanting line and be added into the columns, 
the parent’s race being noted by horizontal lines 
will be only memoranda and not component units 
of the column total. 

It will therefore behoove each mother, if she 
wish her child to have a complete registration, to 
acquaint herself with the identity of the father 
and steer clear of unregistered males, unless there 
be good reason to do otherwise. 

In addition to the typewritten copy of the reg¬ 
ister and carbon copies transmitted to the bureaus 
of vital statistics, a linotype will be made of 
each birth in chronological order. At the close 
of each calendar year the register of births for 
the year elapsed will be printed and published in 
book form with suitable preface, summaries, etc. 

The size of the edition will be the number of 
existing birth houses, each one of which will be 
sent a copy in exchange for the one published by 
them. Each house will therefore contain a refer¬ 
ence library of all births registered prior to the 
current year in all places, with which they will 
compare and verify the nativity of each parent, 
especially of the reported father whenever open 
to question. 


28 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


All possibility of the records being irretriev¬ 
ably destroyed during the lives of the generation 
registered will be obviated because of the world¬ 
wide distribution of the books. 

Upon the birth of each child of registered 
parents, a complete record of the birth upon a 
standard form will be transmitted to the birth 
house of each parent, whether local or remotely 
situated. It will there be placed in the personal 
portfolio containing the annual advices and 
photograph portraits. 

The metal tablets which, before the parents 
were registered persons, containing only the na¬ 
tivity number of the child in one column of figures 
will now be engraved or embossed in smaller 
characters. They will then admit of three col¬ 
umns containing the nativity or identification num¬ 
bers in the respective order of the child, the 
mother and the father. 

As the identity of the mother is absolutely estab¬ 
lished while that of the father is only a matter 
of hearsay or at best circumstantial evidence, the 
mother will always be placed first in the nativity 
records. 

The records by this time, being richer in sig¬ 
nificant facts, will permit of more scientific tabu¬ 
lation and statistical compilation. The minimum 
and maximum ages of both parents and the 
seniority of either will then be stated in terms 
of percentages as well as the birth at or away 
from the native place of either or both parents. 


THE NATIVITY 


29 


Consequently the drift of population will be de¬ 
tected at the outset. 

Each person will also possess a graven record 
of the nativity of both parents and whole or half 
brothers and sisters of scattered families unwit¬ 
tingly forming attachments as strangers will de¬ 
tect any prohibitive consanguinity by comparing 
their individual tablets. No additions will be 
made to the marks on the body. 

Every person will be registered and fully 
accounted for and their number published through¬ 
out the world. The same number will be indelibly 
imprinted in two places on their living bodies. 

There will be an accumulation of irrefutable 
evidence in the advices of residence, offspring and 
the annual full face and profile portrait on file in 
the house of their birth. These will make crime 
or mysterious disappearance awkward, to say the 
least, and afford a security from harm or foul 
play otherwise unobtainable. 

Kidnapping of children, false imprisonment, 
and all classes of disorder, dependent on the sup¬ 
pression or concealment of the identity, will 
become quite impossible. Children can never get 
lost. 

It takes little imagination to see that statistics 
now incompletely published at intervals of ten 
years will then be published daily with a wealth 
of detail transcending the wildest dreams of the 
present day statistician. 

The deaths in the same manner as the births 
will be published both by locality or actual occur- 


3 o A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


ence and by locality of nativity and the one proven 
to the other. The race, sexes, ages, causes and all 
other significant facts will alike be matters of reg¬ 
istration and reporting, the making of useful cal¬ 
culations and the deducing of useful conclusions, 
to say nothing of the multitude of services directly 
contributing to the advantage of the individual 
which it is the object of this work to reveal. 


CHAPTER II 


THE NURSERY 

Every mother and child will continue to occupy 
the accommodations provided in the birth house 
and be supplied with all the creature comforts 
and necessities for ten days or such other period 
as shall be established by law, as sufficient for the 
mother in which to fully recuperate. 

The mother and child will thereupon be trans¬ 
ferred to another institution to remain until the 
period of nursing at the breast is over and the 
child is weaned. 

It will not be necessary that these latter institu¬ 
tions called nurseries, shall occupy any particular 
or permanent sites. The question as to whether 
they be few and large or many and small will be 
purely a matter of administrative economy. They 
will also be situated in a variety of localities. Some 
will be designed and appointed for the free main¬ 
tenance of the inmates. Others will be of varying 
degrees of elegance and luxury and will cost dif¬ 
ferent rates for those occupying them as pay 
guests. 

In any event, whether they be large and free or 
small and comparatively private pay nurseries, 

31 


32 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


they will all conform to the same fundamental 
requisites, which are these :— 

Each institution will be presided over by a fe¬ 
male faculty consisting of the following officers, 
namely—(a) A medical superintendent or chief 
physician with as many assistants as the magnitude 
of the institution will require. (b) A dietary 
superintendent or chief housekeeper with the nec¬ 
essary assistants, who will have charge of all mat¬ 
ters relating to the food, (c) A chief janitor who 
will supervise all the operations involved in the 
laundry, bedroom, housecleaning and sanitation 
generally. 

The class of work that requires lifting heavy 
weights or mechanical skill, for which a woman is 
obviously unfitted or untrained, will be done by 
men. All other work outside or inside including 
cooking, bedmaking, laundry and housecleaning 
will be performed by such of the inmates as are 
not physcically incapacitated. All work will be 
done under the tutelage of the chief physician, 
housekeeper and janitor. 

The institution will therefore assume the char¬ 
acter of a mother’s college of domestic science and 
comprise a course of from nine months to one year, 
according as the length of the period of nursing 
may be fixed by law. During such time each 
mother will learn (under the instructions of 
experts and in the extremely practical way of per¬ 
forming actual duties) how to do the following 
things:— 

To take care of the physical needs of her infant. 


THE NURSERY 


33 


To make all the clothing for herself and child. 
To prepare, cook and serve all manner of food. 
To make beds, clean and ventilate apartments and 
observe the laws of household sanitation. To 
perform all manner of laundry work from the 
roughest washing to the ironing of the finest lace 
shirtwaists. 

To conserve her own health by rational exercise 
in the open. To take care of shrubs, flowers and 
other plants. Generally to learn to do all those 
things that make for comfort. To learn the use 
of proper appliances and tools. To work with the 
least possible effort and the greatest degree of 
efficiency. 

As the mothers will be organized in little classes, 
they will take turns in preparing the meals and per¬ 
forming every detail of the daily routine. Each 
mother at the end of her stay will have learned 
the exact quantity of food to prepare for a stated 
number of persons. The kind and variety to afford 
the normal average quantity of calories and pro- 
teids per capita. The appropriate selection of 
fruits and vegetables and other foods eaten prin¬ 
cipally for flavor and relish without unbalancing 
the essential energy and tissue-building units of the 
repast. 

In short, every mother upon completing the 
nursing period will graduate a proficient dietitian 
and hygienic housewife. She will have acquired 
all those punctilious and fastidious habits and 
tastes that her sojourn in a thoroughly appointed, 


34 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


scientifically directed and immaculately conducted 
institution will have inculcated. 

There will of course be a storm of protest from 
the idle rich against requiring a refined, delicate 
lady, used to every luxury and weakening indul¬ 
gence, to perform such work. To even ask a lady 
who has made the one great sacrifice of her life 
in giving birth to a son or daughter, to cook, clean 
wash and iron like the lowest menial will be 
characterized as simply preposterous. 

In the first place the cooking, cleaning, washing 
and ironing and all other items of domestic science 
are but indifferently done by the lowest menial. 
Being scientific, they require brain as well as brawn 
and many ladies are neither short of the one or 
altogether destitute of the other. 

In all free nurseries, no capable inmate will be 
cheated out of her college course. Many will 
thereby become proficient who without such oppor¬ 
tunity never would be. In this class of institutions 
there will be no fear but that those who have as¬ 
sumed the responsibility and have been granted 
the privilege of creating life will gladly learn how 
to take care of it, in a scientific and skillful way. 

In pay institutions the same opportunity will be 
extended to each mother, to learn the duties of her 
office as a mere matter of human justice. Her 
baby is the opportunity as well as the inspiration 
of her life to learn what a living organism of the 
highest type requires and what it means to minister 
to it. This opportunity to learn is hers by right 
and must not be withheld from her. It is the game 


THE NURSERY 


35 


of life all normal women want to play. If how¬ 
ever her baby disgusts her in the normal manifes¬ 
tations of its functions, if instead of filling her 
heart with delight at the evidence of health, she 
passes it over with a shudder and selfish sigh for 
the hired maid to scavenge, then she is surely un¬ 
fortunate in the character she has developed and 
no time will be wasted in trying to fan dead ashes 
into a flame of motherly love where no live spark 
already glows. 

Fortunately, however, there are and will be few 
mothers, rich or poor, who are not mothers in 
heart by virtue of their motherhood. In such 
nurseries as will be peopled by the educated, cul¬ 
tured and intelligent rich who are active workers 
in all fields of human betterment, the only differ¬ 
ence that will be observable between their work 
and that of their less fortunate sisters will be the 
higher artistic feeling and daintier touch that will 
characterize their performance. 

It will be some time during the nursing period 
that the child will receive the imprint upon its 
body of the identification or nativity number 
described in Chapter I. 

While the making of an indelible tatoo upon the 
skin to last through life, suggests the idea of dis¬ 
figurement or mutilation, it will be observed that 
it is less painful or deforming than either vac¬ 
cination or circumcision. 

It will be located on a part of the body where 
it will not appear, except when purposely exposed. 
The beautiful contour and unsullied surface of the 


36 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 

arm, leg, back, rump, chest or abdomen will not 
be defaced. 

The small square shield located over the 
ribs, under the arm and above the waist, will have 
to be sought for to be seen. Being seldom closely 
observed, always involved in a maze of shadows 
and highlights and on the most expressionless part 
of the body, it will be less conspicuous than would 
be the heel or sole of the foot if selected as the 
locality of the marks. 

The main problem to be considered will be the 
chemical formula of the pigment, the manner of 
making it indelible and the permanency or free¬ 
dom from fading or spreading of the characters 
employed. 

In the course of the events just foretold there 
will arise certain complaints, the nature of which 
and the answers that will be made thereto are 
epitomized in the following outline of the argu¬ 
ment. 

Where it is not the first child and there are other 
children left at home with the father, it will appear 
that to have the mother absent from her husband 
and older children for so long a time will be pro¬ 
hibitive because of the family duties that will be 
neglected in consequence. 

The sojourn at the birth house from the time 
she takes possession of her reservation therein and 
subsequently in the nursery may cover a period of 
over a year. The question arises, how will her 
husband and children get along without her. Such 
a question will not arise with the wealthy. With 


THE NURSERY 


37 

those in what is known as humble circumstances, so 
protracted an absence will look like a hardship. 

The real hardship, however, exists today in the 
multitude of tasks that overwhelm the mother dur¬ 
ing the prenatal days of the child and those imme¬ 
diately following the birth. These tasks often 
continue until the child is weaned, if not long after¬ 
wards, with unrelenting continuity, as succeeding 
children follow in turn. However, even under the 
ideal conditions already outlined, she will still 
have all that she can possibly attend to and be 
happy. 

Although it is a possibility, if not a probability, 
occurring to every thoughtful mind, it seems indeed 
appalling to think of a mother involved in the mul¬ 
titude of delicate functions that attach to the care 
of herself and nursing infant, being confronted by 
such conditions as these. To live in squalid quar¬ 
ters because none better are provided for her. To 
be compelled to perform household drudgery of 
the most wearing kind, requiring her perchance to 
watch over dangerously sick children. To face the 
return at night of a husband who, if not besotted, 
is bestial. Who makes demands upon her which, 
although under the pretense of legal right and 
privilege, are nevertheless utterly incompatible 
with the eternal fitness of things. 

If, on the other hand, the mother should die in 
childbirth, for the very want of proper facilities, 
attention and a fair chance to perform her proper 
functions, then the husband and children would 
have to do without her. Somebody some way 


3 8 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 

would then be found to bridge the gap, as always 
happens. Why not bridge it at the outset and 
save the mother. 

No, the mother has quite enough of the most 
important business on hand to attend to. The 
whole future of the infant who has been brought 
into existence demands, and justly demands, that 
the mother shall continue to be both well and 
happy. No, she will not be suffered to go home 
and face the trials and maybe the horrors that 
await her coming, even if womanlike, she offer 
her life as a sacrifice for her children. Beautiful 
as is the heart that makes such a sacrifice, the 
conditions that make it seemingly necessary are 
hideous. Until she is through, therefore, with the 
business on hand, the husband and children must 
take care of the situation as best they can and 
patiently await her coming. The new baby must 
have at least a fair physical start in life. 

The normal is always assumed until the con¬ 
trary is found. It is assumed therefore that upon 
the discharge of the mother from the nursery at 
the expiration of the prescribed period, she will 
return with her baby to a home where she is 
welcomed with open arms and exclamations of 
joy. A home, which if not sumptuous, is still the 
dearest spot on earth, a husband, who if not rich 
in worldly goods, is rich in unselfish affection for 
his wife and children. With the new star in the 
family constellation and the new knowledge the 
wife has acquired while under the tutelage of ex¬ 
perts, the future shines bright in the little home. 


THE NURSERY 


39 


There is every reason to hope that their lives will 
be happier year after year, as they watch their 
little brood grow up and ripen into noble, beau¬ 
tiful, kind and. efficient manhood and womanhood, 
to gladden their declining years. 

There is unfortunately a dark side also to the 
picture and the work wiil not have been finished. 

The commonwealth, the social system, the state, 
call it what you will, shall have decreed that the 
protection so far afforded the child shall continue 
and the child shall not perish from want and 
neglect during the period of its dependence. 

If, in order to save the child, the mother must 
be saved, then the protection must be afforded her 
also. 

The child shall not be compelled to spend the 
tender and impressionable years of its life with 
no better food, clothing and shelter than extreme 
poverty, ignorance and maybe vice can provide, 
with no better playground than the dirty sidewalk 
and gutter of a city alley, with no better com¬ 
panions than the ragged, unclean, quarrelsome 
and diseased children of the same squalid neigh¬ 
borhood, and with no better opportunities than 
to be knocked down, run over and in any one of 
a hundred ways crippled for life. Education and 
aestheticism form no part of the picture, because 
they are nowhere in it. 

If it shall turn out that a young mother and 
her chubby baby, in the perfect health and beauty 
of a fair start, have no alternative on leaving the 
nursery but to return to a home that holds no 
promise of happiness, if the conditions and en- 


40 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


vironment that await them, as made known by the 
mother, are such as give the chief physician and 
housekeeper reason to believe that they menace 
the prospects of the child, then they will be em¬ 
powered, yes, directed by the laws and statutes 
of the state, to say to the mother in true womanly 
fashion: 

“My dear, you need not go, stay here. WE, 
THE STATE, will send your child to a place 
where it will be fed, clothed, trained and educated 
by kind and capable teachers, cared for during ill¬ 
ness by kind and capable doctors and nurses and 
given the happiest and best possible childhood that 
ample means, kind hearts and experienced judg¬ 
ment can bestow. As for yourself, you will be 
assigned to one of the numerous positions of 
civil service in the birth houses, kindergartens and 
other institutions for which only mothers are 
eligible and for the duties of which your training 
and performance while here have qualified you.” 

If the husband seeks to recover the wife whose 
eyes have seen the decencies of life, and for whose 
child’s sake she has felt it her duty to leave him, 
he must prove his ability to provide and mantain 
a habitable home. He must further prove his 
freedom from any obnoxious personal habits, his 
physical soundness and that the apprehensions of 
the wife were groundless, before her decision to 
accept the offer of an independence can be over¬ 
ruled. 

There will, however, be no legal divorce, no 


THE NURSERY 


4i 


remarriage or cohabitation of either, with another 
consort. 

The incapacity to rear children without becom¬ 
ing a burden on the community will have been 
confessed by themselves and they stand for the 
time being, disqualified in consequence. 

It will not be the intention, however, to punish 
them for their misfortune or to consign them 
to permanent unhappiness. The woman may have 
strong motherly instincts and want another child 
to love and to nurse. If, by study, practice, and 
similar effort, she qualify for, and obtain a posi¬ 
tion outside of the civil service, she will auto¬ 
matically regain her freedom to marry again. 
She and her intended consort must, however, from 
their united resources, first reimburse the state for 
the past care and education of her child, and any 
of his that may be or have been a like charge on 
the commonwealth. At the same time they must 
give an undertaking to reimburse the state annu¬ 
ally thereafter for the further care of said child¬ 
ren, until they have reached their majority. 

The husband also may be still comparatively 
young and yearn for the endearments of wife 
and children with sufficient intensity to rouse him 
to a creditable performance. If he qualify to 
resume the privileges of a consort and the wife 
from whom he has been severed has not married 
another, he may win her back and alone be able 
to make the necessary reimbursement and in¬ 
demnification without requiring her to take the 
initiative. 


42 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


It is quite clear, however, that mutual earnest¬ 
ness of purpose and personal fredom from coer¬ 
cion or restraint must obtain in the case of both 
husband and wife in order to resume such rela¬ 
tionship after it has once been forfeited by default. 
If, as a third alternative, another party has paid 
the reimbursement and given the undertaking for 
her child, and the cast-off husband wishes to take 
another wife in marriage, he must first reimburse 
the second spouse of his first wife for the pay¬ 
ment on account of his own child, and assume the 
undertaking therefor, before he will be permitted 
to marry under the law. 

Of all this commotion, however, the child will 
remain blissfully ignorant and unconcerned. 
Under the beneficent protection of its guardian, 
THE STATE, it will grow into a perfect physical 
and intellectual man or woman. It will assume 
its place in life as thoroughly equipped for its 
duties and pleasures as its native ability to profit 
by every opportunity will permit. It will enjoy 
all the educational advantages it can fairly earn 
from just and impartial teachers and the question¬ 
able distinction existing between the home and the 
institutionally raised child will be in favor of the 
latter until it disappears altogether before the 
native ability, accomplishments and performance 
of the individual. 


CHAPTER III 


THE KINDERGARTEN 

As indicated in the first chapter, there will also 
be a class of public institutions in which to separate 
children from their parents and bring them in con¬ 
stant contact with their nurses, teachers and each 
other during the period of nine years between their 
first and tenth birthdays. 

Children remaining in the nursery after their 
mothers have gone to fill civil service positions 
will be transferred to a kindergarten as wards of 
the state. Children leaving the nurseries with 
their mothers and returning to a private home, can 
be matriculated as pay pupils at standard tuition 
charges, provided they be brought before the first 
anniversary of birth, otherwise they will be for¬ 
ever barred from the institution. The parents 
will then have to privately assume responsibility 
for their education until reaching the age of ad¬ 
mission to such of the old class of schools (either 
free or pay) as still survive. The necessity of 
this limitation will shortly appear. 

Mothers intending to matriculate their children 
in these kindergartens as pay pupils, may leave 
them at the nursery, from which they will be trans- 
43 


44 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


ferred in the same manner as a state ward. This 
will insure the risk of illness or accident preventing 
their transportation from the home between wean¬ 
ing and their first birthday. 

As the children will live at the kindergarten and 
be taken absolutely out of the home, their food, 
clothing, medical attendance and every expense 
incident to their board, lodging and keep will be 
covered by the tuition fee. Such fee will be 
based upon the actual per capita cost and therefore 
will not be greater in any case than the cost of 
raising and educating the child at home. 

The institutions will be presided over exclusively 
by mothers and will include, beside the head phy¬ 
sician and chief instructor, the required number 
of nurses, teachers and servants to wash, dress, 
teach and amuse the children and take care of them 
when ill. 

In addition to training the children to take care 
of their necessary comforts, to walk, swim and 
when old enough, to dance, skate and perform all 
the essentials of physical culture, the foundations 
of their education will be laid. These will go, 
however, no further than reading, writing and 
spelling the most ordinary words and mastering 
the four fundamental rules of arithmetic. 

The first and most essential part of each child’s 
education will be to learn to talk, and for this 
purpose the personal contact of the children with 
each other will be used to the utmost. The 
teachers will merely correct false pronunciation 


THE KINDERGARTEN 


45 

and bad syntax and rely upon the children’s own 
instinct to talk and so teach each other. 

As the older children will talk to the younger 
and the boys and girls to each other, each child 
will learn to talk at the earliest possible age in 
which the desire to communicate thought awakens. 

The kindergarten will be divided into a cluster 
of cantons, each consisting of classrooms and 
dormitories, and occupying separate buildings and 
grounds. Each canton will be presided over by 
nurses and teachers speaking one of the principal 
living languages and different from that spoken 
in any other canton. All conversation by the 
nurses and teachers, while dressing and undress¬ 
ing, bathing and teaching the children, will be in 
the language of the canton. The older children, 
who will be relatively proficient in all the lan¬ 
guages, will be required to confine all their con¬ 
versation with the smaller children as well as 
with each other, to the language of the canton 
which they are in, at the time. 

Only the important and useful languages in 
which competent teachers can be obtained, will 
be recognized, and the children will be trans¬ 
ferred to a different canton in the cycle at stated 
intervals. No language will become set and all 
tongues spoken will be equally familiar to the 
child from the outset. This will be one of the 
reasons why all children must matriculate before 
the languages form in their minds and have the 
help of the other children to give them the proper 
pronunciation. If, on the other hand, they en- 


46 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


tered in the classes with one language uppermost 
in their minds and little or no familiarity with 
the others, they would not be able to progress 
in the cycle of cantons and confusion would follow 
in consequence. 

The younger children will be transferred from 
one canton to another at the most frequent in¬ 
tervals. As they grow older and it becomes more 
important to follow each study with less inter¬ 
ruption, the transfers will become less frequent. 

By the different intervals of the children in 
transit from one canton to the other, they will 
each come in contact with all the other children 
in the constantly changing personnel of their 
chums and immediate classmates. 

While the child is in each canton, such lessons 
as it receives in reading, writing and arithmetic 
will be in the language of the canton wherein 
such lessons will be given. Each child will 
progress apparently much more slowly because of 
the number of languages simultaneously being 
learned. 

Because, however, of the fact that no language 
will as yet pre-empt the mind to the exclusion of 
all others, the child will be able to learn them 
all, with an ease that can never be approached, 
if deferred until later in life, and after the 
memory age, in which nothing heard is forgotten, 
has passed. Rhymes and folk songs will be freely 
used to repeat and impress the essentials of each 
language on the mind, like the faces of so many 


THE KINDERGARTEN 


47 


favorite playmates or the prettiest pictures in a 
library of fairy tales. 

The period between one and ten years is the 
most beautiful in the child’s life, and the back¬ 
ground it affords is the most important of the 
future memory picture. , 

In this age the children will be encouraged to 
observe more and think less than later in life. 
During this time they observe so easily and think 
with so much difficulty, as well as error, accepting 
everything on its surface indications, and making 
no deep scrutiny. 

During this time they will learn the world 
round about them, the distinctive differences be¬ 
tween the more common varieties of plants and 
animals, beasts, birds and fishes. They will feed 
the chicks and watch the flocks and herds as well 
as the bee and the butterfly and the wild beasts 
whenever observable in nature, in captivity or the 
movies. 

While seeing with the interest that only child¬ 
hood knows, they will unconsciously learn from 
their teachers the correct names of all forms of 
life in the several languages so that they can talk 
about them to each other and know by what names 
to call them. 

But above all things the first and last great 
opportunity will be seized to defend them from 
all mysticism, superstition and unchased imagin¬ 
ings in after life concerning the sex problem. 
They will be armed now, while in a state of inno¬ 
cence, with the innocence of wisdom, in place of 


48 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 

the usual innocence of ignorance. The former 
stands against all assault, while the latter promptly 
goes to pieces at the first real test. 

The kindergarten therefore will be co-educa- 
tional in the truest sense and the sexes will act 
and react on each other with all the sweetness of 
infantile romance and its marvellous possibilities 
for good. The children will at the outset become 
familiar with the appearance of each other’s 
naked bodies, both of their own and the opposite 
sex, as they bathe, swim and play together in the 
nude. 

They will be at that age when their little bodies 
are most beautiful to behold at any angle of view. 
At a later period, when they become stringy, 
gaunt and unsightly with rapid growth, it will be 
too late to print the lovely picture on the memory. 

They will, at this period of life, all be 
Raphael’s cherubs and have nothing to hide or 
be ashamed of. In fact, they will perceive and 
recognize their own mutual and common beauty 
and no doubt express their appreciation in kisses 
and innocent caresses. A child is no fool, and 
unless it has been deliberately poisoned by one 
of its elders, it is pure as the driven snow, has 
no evil appetites and knows no guilty fear. 

The straight, lithe figure of the little boy will 
show in exquisitely contrasting beauty besides the 
dainty dimples and fairy curves of the little girl. 
Owning each other’s charms and worth, they will 
walk, swim and talk with that childish abandon 


THE KINDERGARTEN 


49 


of subconscious security from all moral danger, 
quite impossible in any later period of life. 

During this highly poetic period of life, the 
boys will be taught the principles of the only true 
chivalry worth considering and which can only 
be learned in its native purity by a mind that is 
pure. 

They will be informed that the beautiful com¬ 
panions which they have already observed are 
physically and temperamentally so different from 
themselves, are of a finer grain and more sensitive 
to unkind and ungentle treatment and in return 
are more considerate of the feelings of others 
than are the rougher boys in their intercourse with 
each other. For that reason, while they may 
justly give to their boy companions the same rough 
treatment that they are cheerfully willing to take 
from them, they must be as gentle in word and 
deed to their girl companions as they find the girls 
to be to each other and to them. 

They will also learn that the life that they 
now enjoy was won for them by one of the same 
wonderful companions, who once upon a time 
knowingly, willingly and for their happiness, 
underwent great discomfiture, and bravely faced 
great dangers. That the same lovely companions, 
living with them today, will on some day to come, 
be called upon, and willingly consent to make the 
same sacrifice and evince the same unselfish 
bravery, in order that a future generation may 
also know the joy of living. 

The debt they owe their mothers will thus be 


50 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 

made the reason for honoring their mother’s sex. 

The natural fondness for becoming drapery 
and personal adornment will be allowed full play. 
The ugly uniforms that have humbled the child 
of the institution in years past will be seen no 
more. Befitting attire for each age, sex and type 
of childish beauty, and the color, cut and decora¬ 
tion for each grade and rank of scholarship will 
afford a variety of costumes more than sufficient 
to set off each child’s personality. During the 
class sessions, during meals, recreation and exer¬ 
cise, each child will experience the satisfaction 
and self-respect of having nothing to apologize 
for with regard to clothes. The world and the 
fullness thereof will truly be theirs and the divine 
right of kings will become an insignificant con¬ 
sideration when compared with the divine rights 
of children. 

In these institutions the physical wants of the 
children will be under expert supervision. The 
food will be selected, varied and adapted to their 
growing needs with a knowledge that no mother, 
guided only by the caprice of her own palate, 
could possibly command. 

The nurses and teachers will all have been 
mothers, and consequently will be personally inter¬ 
ested in the charges under them. 

It will be quite impossible in any private resi¬ 
dence, even with unlimited means and a swarm of 
nurses and governesses, to begin to give the child 
the intelligent, skillful and loving training and 
instruction that such institutions will bestow on 


THE KINDERGARTEN 


5i 


the children committed to their care. Surely such 
care is what every child is entitled to because it 
is possible. The little life should never have been 
created if it was to suffer any deprivation of the 
best the world has to give. 

The subject of the segregation of the races will 
be an economic question to be considered at the 
proper time. It is not a detail that need be con¬ 
sidered now. 

No child will be coerced to study music against 
its will. When the child’s hands are sufficiently 
large and strong to manipulate a musical instru¬ 
ment and the passion for music awakens, the child 
will be permitted the use of the piano, organ, harp, 
violin or any other instrument for which it con¬ 
ceives a liking. It will also be allowed to spend 
as much time in serious practice under the instruc¬ 
tion of a competent music teacher as its natural 
inclination prompts within safe limits. 

Those children who develop musical genius will 
be organized into orchestras and bands or encour¬ 
aged to give solo recitals to stimulate the emula¬ 
tion of such other children as have sufficient native 
music ability to voluntarily cultivate it under sug¬ 
gestion. Any pronounced artistic ability in the 
direction of drawing, histrionics, elocution or 
handicraft that becomes manifest in the child will 
be cultivated as far as consistent with the kinder¬ 
garten curriculum. 

At the time of leaving for the school, a memo¬ 
randum, calling attention to such exceptional 
ability, will be transmitted to the faculty, who will 


52 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


have the child’s further education in hand. If the 
results are sufficiently promising, the cultivation 
of the special art will be given right of way over 
those studies for which the child may evince least 
aptitude. 

Upon the child reaching the age of ten years, 
it will have completed the kindergarten course. It 
must then leave that institution to go to the home 
of its parents, if a pay pupil, or if it be a state 
ward, to go to the state school in which it is to 
live and continue its education. 

The child will, at this tender age, already be 
in possession of a superb physique and faultless 
in its deportment at the banquet table, in the 
parlor and on the dancing floor. It will have 
learned how to swim, skate, sail a boat and ride 
a saddle pony, as well as how to read, write and 
conduct an intelligent conversation in six or eight 
of the principal living languages. It will have a 
lay acquaintance with botany, zoology, petrology, 
and be able to perform operations in simple 
arithmetic. 

The first named or physical accomplishments 
are purely matters of opportunity that every child 
will enjoy, but few have at the present time, not¬ 
withstanding that they are as important as know¬ 
ing how to walk or stand. The latter or mental 
accomplishments will be made possible by the 
facilities the kindergarten alone has, to segregate 
the languages and continually bring the children 
in contact with new personalities. 

All the influences that make for rapid yet nor- 


THE KINDERGARTEN 


53 


mal development without undue mental effort will 
have constantly surrounded the child, during the 
nine years’ residence in the kindergarten. 

All details of manual training compatible with 
the children’s ages and appropriate to their sex, 
coming within a normal daily routine or habit and 
relating to personal grooming and care of per¬ 
sonal effects, will be part of their acquired educa¬ 
tion. 

In time, it will become obvious that the gradu¬ 
ates from the state kindergarten are superior in 
health, training and education to all other children 
of the same age, who have been reared at home 
or at private boarding schools. Parents, whether 
rich or poor, having the interest of their children 
at heart, will hesitate to lose the opportunity for 
them that the institutional school affords. The 
selfish pleasure of keeping them at home as play¬ 
things will not be a sufficient compensation to 
deprive them of such priceless benefits. The 
social censure and self reproach that such a pro¬ 
nounced injustice to their children will deservedly 
bring down upon their doting and irrational heads 
will be more than they care to risk. 

The affection of the parent for the child, how¬ 
ever intense and demonstrative it may be, will then 
be regarded as a poor possession, if it stand in the 
way of its only chance to come into the full use 
of all its faculties and start life properly equipped 
for seizing and enjoying all its benefits. 

It will be granted that the love of parents for 
their children is as beautiful to behold as it is 


54 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


eternal. Yet this very love and the knowledge a 
cunning and calculating child obtains of how much 
coaxing it takes to get any indulgence it wants, has 
often in the end been its downfall and the wreck¬ 
ing of its career. 

No one was to blame. The possibilities for 
mischief lurking in the unregulated attachment of 
consanguinity alone will be a sufficient cause for 
adopting some safer mode of rearing the child 
than trusting solely to the wisdom of its parents. 

The inability of its parents, regardless of their 
means, facilities and wisdom, to rear the child 
in a way even approaching the excellence and 
thoroughness of the institutional rearing, will 
shortly discourage all attempts to do so. All 
children alike will be made wards of the state 
from the outset. Accordingly, the state will be 
provided with ample means for a work of such 
paramount importance to the race, without being 
required to rely to any extent upon their tuition 
fees or voluntary contributions by the more 
wealthy of the community. 

It will appear by this time that all children, 
from a moment antedating their birth, until com¬ 
pleting their tenth year, will be charges upon the 
state, and the parents will be relieved of all ex¬ 
pense and care on their account. It will be seen 
that any curtailing of facilities consequent upon 
insufficiency of funds, will militate against the 
children of rich and poor alike. If the rich 
would insure the future of their own offspring, 
they must insure the finances of their almta mater. 


THE KINDERGARTEN 


55 


It will be assumed first, that the population 
will about hold its own and accordingly that the 
average family will consist of the parents and 
two children, and second, that the cost of properly 
raising, educating and entertaining a child will be 
equal, in the long run, to the cost of maintaining 
an adult, and at the age of ten years a child will 
be half over the period of dependence. 

Acting on these assumptions, laws will be 
framed and statutes enacted requiring that every 
person old enough to be a parent shall pay to the 
state for the institutional support of all children 
under ten years of age, an income tax of one-eighth 
of the net income otherwise available for their 
own private use, including such amount as would 
have been devoted to the raising of their families 
had the state not undertaken to do so for them. 

This income tax will be uninvolved with the 
consideration of any other taxes or imposts what¬ 
ever. It will be levied indiscriminately in the 
amount of one-eighth of the entire net income of 
millionaire and wage-earner alike, and of those 
in private as well as those in public employment. 

In other words, there will be set aside for the 
raising and educating of the little ones, one-eighth 
of the aggregate net income of all persons having 
incomes, regardless in each case as to whether 
said income is one dollar or one million dollars 
per annum. 

Income from days’ wage for labor performed 
and from capital invested in financial and indus¬ 
trial enterprises, as well as from gift, speculation, 


56 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 

inheritance or any other cause, after deducting 
only actual offsets, will pay its one-eighth part for 
rearing and educating the rising generation, and 
each and every one of them individually. 

This amount will be put into a general fund 
or group of funds to be used in the maintenance 
and operation of birth houses, nurseries and 
kindergartens. Also the establishment of such 
reserves, pensions and related administrative ex¬ 
pedients and making such provisions as may be 
deemed wise and just. All expenses will be regu¬ 
larly authorized by bills of appropriation based 
on annual budgets and allotment programmes. 
All claims will be duly audited before payment. 

The resulting of any unexpended surplus on 
the one hand or deficiency of funds on the other 
hand will determine to what extent the levy of 
one-eighth will be decreased or increased in 
measuring up to the full requirements of suc¬ 
ceeding years. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE SCHOOL 

The children of parents who desire to repossess 
them sufficiently to lose sight of all other con¬ 
siderations will return home upon completing their 
tenth year and graduating from the kindergarten. 
There will remain, however, the wards of the state 
who will continue for a further period under its 
care and protection. There will also be the 
children of such parents as, having their true 
interests at heart will be willing to forego the 
purely sentimental desire to have them sleep under 
the same roof, in order that they may continue 
their studies under the surpassing facilities and 
discipline provided by the state schools. Their 
children will accordingly again be matriculated, 
this time as pay pupils in the state school under 
substantially the same conditions as attached to 
the kindergarten. They must do it at once or not 
at all, and their children can be transferred directly 
from the kindergarten to the school on their tenth 
birthday in the same manner as a state ward. 

The children will then be approaching the age 
of puberty (although still at a safe distance), when 
their sexual instincts will begin to awaken. For 
57 


58 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 

this reason, the unrestrained intermingling of the 
sexes that has obtained since their babyhood will 
cease', and the co-educational feature of their in¬ 
struction will be discontinued. 

The sexes will now be segregated by sending 
the girls and boys to different schools and plac¬ 
ing them under teachers of their own sex. 

This will occasion the conducting by the state 
of two further but co-ordinate classes of institu¬ 
tions, namely: 

(1) Girls’ schools, wherein mother principals 
will exercise supervision over women teachers and 
the food, sleeping accommodations, clothing and 
all other physical needs will be taken care of by 
female attendants; and 

(2) Boys’ schools, wherein father principals 
will supervise men teachers and all matters in¬ 
cident to subsistence, dormitory and apparel will 
be looked after by male attendants. 

The attendants at both boys’ and girls’ schools 
will not, however, perform any work that it 
would be to the scholar’s advantage to learn to 
do for themselves and so become self-reliant and 
resourceful under emergency. 

The segregation will become complete and the 
characteristic traits of femininity and masculinity 
will have full chance to develop unembarrassed 
by any scrutiny or propinquity of the opposite sex. 

The girls and boys will have had each other 
as close companions for ten years, and although 
their communion during the first year was some- 


THE SCHOOL 


59 


what circumscribed, it lacked nothing during the 
last nine years to mar its full usefulness and 
enjoyment. 

They will, by this time, know all about each 
other that is good for them to know at the age 
attained. It will now be time for them to part, 
and in their sexual privacy and in the absence of 
each other, to negotiate the mental and physical 
problems peculiar to their respective sexes, before 
they can again be admitted with advantage, into 
each others’ society. 

At this susceptable age, the perils of propinquity 
and pulchritude must not be permitted to distract 
their thoughts from the studies they will now 
engage. They will not be led into temptation. 
There will be no need of it. 

Up to the age of ten years, all children (with 
the exception of born artists) will measure up to 
the same standards of proficiency because their 
studies will have been only such as come within 
the compass of the ordinary mental endowments. 

In the next five years, however, both those chil¬ 
dren who are candidates for the intellectual pur¬ 
suits and those who are to be the hewers of wood 
and drawers of water will begin to find their re¬ 
spective levels and show to which class they 
belong. The candidates for the learned profes¬ 
sions will be prepared for college and those who 
are to engage in the machanical and physical 
occupations will receive the necessary manual 
training or be apprenticed to master mechanics. 

This final determination of their careers, how- 


6 o A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


ever, will not be made until they have attained the 
age of fifteen and their capabilities will be scien¬ 
tifically tested and accurately appraised. 

While marked ability will be given the fullest 
possible recognition, encouragement and cultiva¬ 
tion under specialists, no time will be wasted in the 
futile attempt to make lawyers out of blacksmiths, 
or doctors out of pupils whose endowments better 
fit them for milliners or carpenters. 

The way of determining the mental powers, 
however, and the limitations of each scholar, will 
be by the unerring test of competition and perform¬ 
ance while at school and the final examination of 
the class. 

In the case of born artists of such pronounced 
ability that their careers are predetermined upon 
the discovery of their talents, the cultivation of 
their natural gifts will take precedence over every¬ 
thing else. The degree of scholarship they may 
also attain will be the best that the time at their 
disposal and their aptitude for the science will 
permit. 

With the rank and file, having no physical en¬ 
dowments of voice, beauty or phenomenal skill and 
possessing varying degrees of mental capacity for 
profound and analytical thought the race that will 
end in the selection of the fittest in the realm of 
intellectual preferment will commence with the 
promotion from the kindergarten to the school. 
The school, occupying the middle ground between 
the kindergarten and the college, will therefore 
be the proving ground of the race in all matters 
relating to scholarship. 


THE SCHOOL 


61 


All children matriculated in the school will be 
formed into classes distinguished by months in¬ 
stead of years, as at the present time. There will 
be the class of February 2000 and the class of 
June 2001. 

The year will be that within which the class 
either begins or completes its five-year course, 
whichever be determined. The month will be the 
one in which the birthday of everyone in that class 
falls. The schools will be sufficiently numerous 
and contiguous or few and remote, to admit of 
forming classes of approximately the full comple¬ 
ment and no more, on each calendar month 
wherein all children whose tenth birthday comes 
within said month will be enrolled. 

The children will line up and start even, upon 
a curriculum open to both sexes alike in their 
respective schools. 

It will comprehend among other subjects Latin, 
Greek, Modern Languages, High Mathematics, 
Geography, History, Literature, Geometry, 
Chemistry, Physics, etc. 

As the race progresses, all scholars showing a 
fair performance in the entire curriculum will go 
forward with the entire course until they reach 
a point in some study at which their performance 
will be so poor as to warrant discontinuing that 
particular study only. 

Such study and such other studies as it is essen¬ 
tial to, will then be dropped. If a scholar shall 
show a marked weakness in mathematics and fall 
hopelessly behind, not only will mathematics be 


62 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


discontinued but also geometry, chemistry and 
physics, nor will such scholar be prepared to enter 
college to study for the profession of architect, 
engineer, astronomer or any other of the dis¬ 
tinctively mathematical sciences. 

At the same time, if the same scholar shall show 
proficiency in some or all of the other studies re¬ 
quiring a different kind of mental power and give 
promise of developing into an able lawyer, doctor, 
botanist, biologist or even an accountant, it will 
then be permitted the scholar to specialize on 
those subjects best calculated to realize such 
promise. 

Each scholar will specialize on the language of 
its native country or chosen habitation. The 
deeper study of the other living languages and 
their literature will depend on the scholar’s pro¬ 
ficiency in Greek or Latin, and aptitude for choos¬ 
ing the career of a linguist. 

As each class progresses throughout the al¬ 
lotted time of five years at speed predicated upon 
the performance of former classes of the same 
grade, the minority of the pupils will forge ahead 
and the majority will drop behind the mean 
standard of the grade work, especially in such 
studies as logically lead to the college. Conse¬ 
quently at some time during the entire period, 
the class will be divided into two clearly dis¬ 
tinguished types of students. Thereupon two 
classes will be established with a distinct curricu¬ 
lum for each. The students of the superior class 
will be prepared for college. The inferior class 


THE SCHOOL 


63 


will enter upon such studies as lead to the manual 
training school and industrial arts and sciences. 
All efforts on the part of any of the scholars of 
the lower class to regain their lost collegiate 
scholarship must now be confined to such suf¬ 
ficient subjects on which they have developed ex¬ 
ceptional capacity and are able to show excep¬ 
tional performance. Every fair and just assist¬ 
ance will then be given them to qualify before 
their fifteenth birthday. 

All scholars on the dividing line of proficiency 
will be given the benefit of the doubt and be per¬ 
mitted to remain in the superior class if they can 
keep up with the work. They will not, however, 
be allowed to imperil their health by over applica¬ 
tion. The full time allotted to sleep and physical 
exercise will be insisted upon. The scholars will 
be under constant observation. 

If, however, such scholars cannot keep up with 
the superior class of work, they must drop back 
into the inferior class. 

In each class there will be a selection of spe¬ 
cialties of such wide variety as will afford ample 
opportunity for each scholar to show the best 
that is in him or her. He or she can therefore 
qualify for as high a class of work and attain as 
high a place in his or her future career as his or 
her native or acquired mental or physical powers 
will make possible. 

When the entire class, comprising both the su¬ 
perior and inferior divisions, shall have finished 
the five years’ course and the scholars shall have 


64 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


reached the age of fifteen years, such of them as 
are destined to a college career and such as are 
destined to some form of craftsmanship or phy¬ 
sical work will be known beyond the shadow of a 
doubt. 

The scholars will accordingly enter upon the 
last five years of their dependence. Those enter¬ 
ing college will be the flower of the race and 
naturally in the minority. Those pursuing every 
other branch of learning, from the skillful artisan 
to the most rugged class of labor, will be the 
bulwark of the race from which the bone and 
sinew of the next generation will, in the nature 
of things, be derived. 


CHAPTER V 


THE COLLEGE 

By the time the manual training schools and 
colleges will be fully organized and the condi¬ 
tions that determine admission to the one or the 
other will be fully established, all remaining pre¬ 
tence of parental initiative or interference with 
the child’s career will have ceased. Until the 
age of twenty years, everybody will be under the 
protection and discipline and be educated at and 
by the state institutions. No responsibility or 
expense of any kind will fall upon any parent on 
account of any child, and the proportion of in¬ 
come which every person will give towards the 
care and education of the rising generation will 
be increased from one-eighth to one-quarter of 
the whole. 

As a corollary, every child will be absolutely 
independent of the caprice, fortune or judgment 
of any sole parent or guardian. All children will 
have back of them the unlimited resources of the 
entire human family without favoritism or sac¬ 
rifice of any kind entering into the problem of 
ways and means. 

At the age of twenty years, adult life will 

65 


66 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


begin and discipline will give place to freedom. 
All persons who, up to that age have had their 
every physical, mental and moral want provided 
for, must from that time forth provide for them¬ 
selves. 

They must further reimburse the state for their 
bringing up, not in a specific amount, but by pay¬ 
ing back one-quarter of all that they may earn or 
receive, until the state, which never grows sick, 
old or poor, shall again fold them in its protect¬ 
ing arms. Thus when they begin to totter at the 
close of life’s journey and second childhood again 
makes them dependents of the state, they will have 
fairly earned and thereupon receive every pos¬ 
sible consideration and comfort in their declining 
years. 

In all cases of the further protraction of study 
in any special line of preparation or research, after 
attaining the age of twenty years, it will be wholly 
under the students’ control as well as at their 
expense. If, however, they have special resources 
in the way of inheritance, rich parents, relatives 
or admirers, upon whom they can draw or whom 
they can influence to finance their ambitions, there 
will be no reason why they shall not avail them¬ 
selves of the advantages to the utmost. 

In order to do so, however, the beneficiaries 
must win the esteem and willing assistance of 
their benefactors, as no law will compel any one 
person unwillingly to give financial support to 
another. It will be the State’s function to relieve 
all real distress. Nor may any doting parents, 


THE COLLEGE 


67 


however wealthy or proud, be able to obtain a 
college education for idle or incapable offspring 
of their own or prevent it being given to the child 
that has earned it at school, even though it be the 
child of a servant. 

The parent, having had no responsibility or 
care concerning the child’s rearing, will have 
none after it is reared, any more than would 
apply to the child of the most distant relative. 
On the other hand, the child having been denied 
no advantages in its bringing up will have no 
claim upon others that will require any sacrifice 
or indulgence on their part. All will look to the 
state for their necessities and be accountable to 
the State alone for all reimbursement or recom¬ 
pense. 

It will be argued that, through the whole animal 
kingdom from the genus homo down, the parents 
have and always must care for their young, during 
the period of dependence, and teach them to the 
extent that is necessary, how to use their faculties 
and members. This is very true of all wild ani¬ 
mals (animals in their natural state or habitat), 
but not so of mankind. Wild animals have un¬ 
limited means and unerring judgment for provid¬ 
ing for themselves and their young with all the 
necessities. If one locality prove unfruitful, they 
can migrate to another, and if nature fail them, 
they perish and do not live to suffer. With the 
human species, however, they have been largely 
divorced from nature and natural resources and 
must negotiate the problems of life as involved in 


68 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


the laws and orders of the social system. One 
parent is rich while another parent is poor, and 
one spoils a selfish child with indulgence while 
the other kills a generous child with privation and 
sacrifice. Thus every child, with few exceptions, 
falls upon one or the other horn of the dilemma. 

Except in such instances as the work is beyond 
the physical strength of women or grossly unfit 
for them to engage in, all trades and professions 
will be open to both sexes at “Equal Pay for 
Equal Work.” 

There will be no reason why a woman shall 
not make as good a doctor, lawyer, architect, 
engineer or accountant or any one of the profes¬ 
sions, requiring only a trained intellect, as a man. 
In fact, the greater intensity of a woman’s love of 
life will make her pre-eminently a good physician 
and aid her in acquiring the requisite knowledge 
of both anatomy and medicine. Women have 
already proven their superiority as nurses, where 
they are not required to lift a two hnudred pound 
man without help. On the other hand, midwifery 
will be as unsuitable a job for a man as it will be 
for the ignorant and coarse-grained woman who 
at the present day seems to be the only alterna¬ 
tive. Obstetrics will be regarded as at once the 
most important, delicate and exact class of busi¬ 
ness and normally the function of the refined, 
skillful, sympathetic and withal highly qualified 
woman physician only. There is something re¬ 
volting about a woman, with her natural horror 
of death, being employed in a slaughter house to 


THE COLLEGE 


69 


kill cattle, nor will such occupation be selected 
for her. After the murder is done, however, the 
buxom housewife will be able to cut as good a 
steak or a roast in the meat market as any man 
that can be found in her stead. 

Moving pianos and other heavy furniture, as 
well as all other forms of extremely coarse labor, 
are not woman’s job and never will be, notwith¬ 
standing that women have been employed to dig 
the subway in Berlin because the men who would 
otherwise have done the work were at the battle 
front. There will always, however, be a small 
number of women of phenomenal strength who, 
from choice, will follow distinctively masculine 
pursuits, and as long as they meet all the require¬ 
ments of their work, there will be no occasion 
to interfere with their selection. 

There will, in any event, be a large number 
of trades requiring only delicacy of touch, like 
jeweller, horologist, and the like, which are now 
followed almost exclusively by men, and which it 
will be found can be done as well, if not better, 
by women. 

After a careful study of the world’s business, 
it will be found that those things in which each 
sex excels will so nearly offset each other, that 
each sex will assume its fair share of the work. 
There will be plenty of useful and lucrative oc¬ 
cupations that will come well within the capaci¬ 
ties of the physically weaker and more delicate 
sex. The woman will no longer be regarded 
merely as the incubator of her husband’s chib 


7 o A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


dren, but as one of the people with all the right to 
live, learn and do, that heretofore has been re¬ 
garded as man’s right only. 

The college will therefore educate the higher 
types of men and women alike for all the learned 
professions, which either can practice with equal 
profit, according to the excellence they severally 
achieve. 

Each woman (in the same way as does the 
man) will then devote her life to her profession 
and regard it as her personal career with the same 
devotion and singleness of purpose as the most 
famous prima donna, actress or author. It will 
be quite immaterial whether or not she be the 
parent of one or many children. In her case, as 
in the case of a man, the children will be only 
normal incidents and not all of life, any more 
than they will be all of which she or he will be 
capable. 

The training schools will prepare the less 
scholarly inclined for the world’s rougher busi¬ 
ness. It will still be necessary to have carpenters, 
iron workers, stone cutters, machinists and skilled 
artisans of a million trades. There will still be 
the need of merchants, shoemakers, glovers, tail¬ 
ors and what not, in which will be needed a hun¬ 
dred capable hands of both sexes to every one in 
the profession. 

The chosen one who took the high road or 
college course will be destined to a life of greater 
mental effort in connection with its problems, as 


THE COLLEGE 


7i 


well as greater influence and distinction in its 
social and artistic strata. 

The “ninety and nine” who took the low 
road of manual training or apprenticeship will 
be, however, by no means objects of commisera¬ 
tion. Carefree, they will enjoy all the blessings 
of congenial employment and fair emoluments 
which the state will guarantee by providing it for 
every individual regardless of sex, race or heredity. 

To this end the State will engage in every line 
of industry that will come within its province in 
connection with the construction, repairing and 
maintaining of its numerous institutions and 
public works. This will, at the outset, afford im¬ 
mediate and lucrative employment and post gradu¬ 
ate practice for all graduates of the manual train¬ 
ing schools and for many of the alumnus of the 
colleges, in connection with the clerical, legal, 
medical and scientific features of the work. 

The public or civil positions will be so numer¬ 
ous as to require the greater number of efficient 
students as fast as they reach their majority. 
There will also be as wide a field as ever for 
private employment in individual or corporate 
enterprises. There will still be railroads, mines, 
quarries, manufacturers, producers, retailers, etc., 
also public utilities and government officers and 
the greater number of the professions, trades and 
occupations carried on at the present time. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE BUSINESS 

All normal persons, after reaching the age of 
twenty years, will be able to obtain employment 
in the particular profession or trade for which 
they have been fitted or to which they can adapt 
their capabilities. 

All persons must pay their own way, and un¬ 
less they have an independent fortune by inheri¬ 
tance, marriage, invention, speculation or excep¬ 
tional ability, they must obtain employment at 
something useful to earn their living. The only 
obstacles to obtaining such employment as will 
afford a revenue of at least four-thirds of the 
cost of a comfortable living will be ill health, 
imbecility or viciousness. In all such cases the 
STATE will find for those so afflicted, employ¬ 
ment coming within their capacities, which, if not 
what they prefer, will at least be healthy. No 
work resulting in the destruction or poisoning of 
bodily tissue, subjecting it to undue strain or mili¬ 
tating against the general health, will be required 
of anyone. 

While many, if not most civil, positions, will 
be opportunities to compete for, and will be given 

72 


THE BUSINESS 


73 


to those showing the highest degree of fitness, still 
there will be many menial occupations, connected 
with the numerous institutions, that will require 
scarcely any skill. These occupations will afford 
healthy employment, both indoors and out, suitable 
for those whose weakness required them to be in 
the open or sheltered from the elements. These 
positions must be filled by some one, and while 
not affording sufficient variety, entertainment and 
exercise of the faculties to be congenial to the 
alert and normal person, they will nevertheless 
afford useful asylums for those who, through either 
incapacity or indolence, have manifested their gen¬ 
eral unfitness for anything better. 

It will not matter whether the incapacity be 
the result of misfortune or malevolence. In the 
first place, the cripple or invalid will welcome the 
chance to be useful and work back to the normal 
or as near as may be thereto, being sure to get 
something better as soon as able to meet the re¬ 
quirements. In the second place, the same wise, 
just, relentless and withal kind discipline will be 
meted out by the authorities as that by which dame 
nature holds in check all those who would wan¬ 
tonly disobey her commandments. 

In any event there will be something for every¬ 
body to do and everybody will be doing it, either 
with good will and in the freedom of loyalty or 
under compulsion, if no better reason can be found. 
Nevertheless, everybody will be paid according to 
performance and rewarded according to merit. 

The characteristic and distinctive feature of the 


74 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


new regime that will differentiate it from the 
former social chaos, will be the underlying and 
overspreading law and fact that nobody will have 
anybody else financially depending upon him or 
her and nobody will be financially dependent upon 
anybody else for any of the essentials of material 
subsistence and comfort. 

Neither husband or wife will be required to 
support the other of them or their children. Both 
of them will have their own independent revenue, 
of which they must pay, as before stated, one- 
quarter to the STATE for the support of the de¬ 
pendent half of the race. This half will ulti¬ 
mately comprehend on the one hand the children 
and on the other hand the ill and superannuated. 

Each person will have only one mouth to feed, 
one body to clothe, one head to shelter from the 
elements. Each person can easily earn by work¬ 
ing a small part of the time, more than enough to 
satisfy all the absolute necessities of food, cloth¬ 
ing and shelter. Every woman will be sure of 
the care of herself and child, whenever it becomes 
necessary for her to temporarily cease from the 
active practice of her profession or trade in con¬ 
sequence of her procreative function. 

She will be equally sure of regaining all the 
rights, powers and privileges of her office or posi¬ 
tion upon the resumption of her duties, as would 
a man after a corresponding absence, resulting 
from illness contracted while performing his 
duties. 

The function of motherhood will take prece- 


THE BUSINESS 


75 


dence over all other considerations and will have 
right of way for as long as need be without pen¬ 
alty, if not reward. There will be absolute free¬ 
dom from all carking care. There will be a carol 
sung over every nativity and only praise and good 
wishes will be heard by the mother. 

As already indicated in this and the preceding 
chapters, the STATE will also undertake the care 
of the cripples, incurables and the superannuated. 
It will accordingly provide sanitariums in which 
to make them as comfortable as possible and give 
them as much freedom and restful and interesting 
occupation as will be safe. 

The employees in these institutions, whether 
doctors, nurses or menials, will all be past middle 
age, and in that sober, serene and tranquil period 
of life best suited to be companionable and sympa¬ 
thetic with the old and feeble. 

The care of both the young and old therefore 
will have been undertaken co-operatively by the 
commonwealth. The individuals will be relieved 
of all anxiety, both for their children in case of 
death, and for themselves when old age or disease 
overtakes them. Both contingencies being now 
provided for, there will be no need of making 
further provision for either. 

Life Insurance, and the drag and drain it has 
imposed upon so many small-wage earners with 
big families, will pass away as the need for it dis¬ 
appears. The crushing loads that fell upon so 
many fathers and mothers, to put their oldest boy 
or girl through college will be things of the past. 


7 6 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


The injustice to the other children who were 
required to sacrifice almost every comfort, will 
become only history. 

There will be, however, no damper on personal 
ambition. There will be the same delight in 
giving pleasure to others and being loved and 
admired for our knowledge and ability to create 
great works of art or perform great uses in the 
interest of humanity. 

There will be the same love of beauty, wealth 
and power. The same desire to accumulate the 
means necessary to realize our ideals, to promote 
science, to combat disease, to prolong life and 
either to elevate the races and peoples who have 
not yet reached our plane of living, or learn the 
secrets of those who surpass us in any special class 
of excellence. The only features of life that will 
commence rapidly to disappear are those found in 
the almshouse, jail and madhouse. 

As only the most indolent can fail to earn more 
than it costs them to live, everybody can accumu¬ 
late capital and grow rich, either slowly or rapidly, 
according to their capacity to acquire wealth. 
As many persons, from time immemorial, have 
willingly given their all, yes, even their lives, to 
gratify the ambitions of a monarch, there will be 
little protest, except from the drones and misers, 
against the rule that requires them to give only 
one-fourth to the STATE, by whom they know 
that they will be considerately cared and provided 
for during their last days. 

Although the picture drawn has been primarily 


THE BUSINESS 


77 


genre because primarily that is the nature of the 
theme under consideration, there will still be na¬ 
tional, state and municipal organizations for the 
protection of life and property, the enforcing of 
law and order and the maintenance of the execu¬ 
tive, legislative and judicial branches of the gov¬ 
ernment. 

These activities will in turn occasion work and 
require services calling for every degree of execu¬ 
tive ability and scholarly attainment, and neces¬ 
sitate the raising and disbursing of vast revenues. 
These revenues, however, will impose no greater 
hardship on the individual than already obtains. 
The tendency will be to reduce them with the dis¬ 
continuance of many of the present burdens in 
connection with education, charity, vice, health, 
and similar matters which will cease under the 
new regime. The abatement of the present-day 
cost of living will be ample compensation for the 
creation of the new and universal charge against 
the incomes of all persons alike. 

The necessity for every man of family to main¬ 
tain a caravansary in which to shelter and feed 
his offspring, will pass, with other hardships, out 
of the scene. The whole care and management of 
such an establishment, involving the multitudinous 
details of marketing, shopping, cooking, clean¬ 
ing, heating, lighting and general operation, which 
has fallen principally upon the mother, will at 
last be an extinct tragedy. 

Grown-up people will live at hotels, more or less 
pretentious according to their means. House- 


78 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


keeping will in this way become co-operative and 
there will be no more use for the private residence 
of old or occasion for the enormous waste of 
energy that their upkeep entailed. Every bit of 
effort will count for some comfort. Work with¬ 
out immediate, concrete and adequate reward will 
afflict the race no more. The “Song of the Shirt” 
will be sung in real life for the last time. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE ISOLATION 

By the time the principles and measures stated 
in the preceding chapters have been generally 
adopted, there will have arisen a multitude of 
women doctors, lawyers, scientists and philoso¬ 
phers and a greater multitude of women skilled 
in craftsmanship. These women will have the 
same power to make and vote upon laws as the 
men, and will have acquired an equal capacity 
to think and act with force and precision in all 
matters of life. 

When, therefore, it is the sense of the more 
intelligent of the men and women alike, that the 
time has come to reform any detail of life, the 
opinion, conviction and decision will not only be 
truly representative of the people, but it will be 
useless to oppose the enactment of laws putting it 
into effect. 

One of the first facts to be recognized will be 
that in the matter of perpetuation of the species; 
woman is making all the sacrifice and man none. 
It is she who has to face the danger and endure 
the discomfiture incident to the winning of each 
new life. 


79 


8o A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


In view, therefore, of the paramount importance 
of her function in the premises, and the justice, if 
not necessity, of consulting her wishes in the mat¬ 
ter, the time will have arrived to emancipate 
woman by freeing her from the practical slavery 
to the male sex that has been her lot since the 
beginning of the world. 

If the consumptive drudge of a farmer’s wife, 
pleading in vain to be spared the ordeal of bearing 
her twelfth child while eleven are still clinging to 
her skirts and wearing her life away in ministering 
unaided to their multitudinous necessities and 
childish diseases, is not slavery, the resemblance 
is too close to be wholesome. True, her husband 
is supposed to love her in his own willful way, as 
he freely comes and goes, quite heedless of the 
heavy end of the log that he has given her to 
carry. This kind of love, however, has been the 
chief cause of her misery. She will now be given 
a chance to do some of the loving in her own way 
and have a voice in making the rules of the game. 

Because the world can grow no bigger and there 
is no benefit to come from undue density of popula¬ 
tion, it will be the consensus of opinion that if 
every woman who can, will give birth to two 
children, one boy and one girl, she will have 
taken all the risk that can reasonably be asked of 
her. 

In order to make up for the loss of population 
by premature deaths and by such of her sisters 
as may have been denied the power to do their 
part, every woman who has born only two sons 


THE ISOLATION 


81 


or two daughters will be encouraged to have a 
third child, in the hopes that it will be of the sex 
opposite to that of her first two. After the third 
child, regardless of its sex, it will be entirely 
optional with her whether she have any more or 
not. 

There is an old saying, “If the man bore the 
first child and the woman bore the second, there 
would never be a third.” Whether it would be 
so or not, there seems to be no justice for the 
father, who takes no physical risk and experi¬ 
ences no physical discomfort, being the arbiter 
as to how frequently the risk should be assumed 
by the mother. 

There will be at once a protest from a certain 
minority and inferior class of men. They will say 
in effect that, while a woman may be content to 
confine her sexual efforts solely in the direction of 
creating new life, with themselves, it is not so 
much a matter of creating new life as gratifying 
the one they already have, adding, “That was 
what women were made for anyway.” They will 
no longer be able to hold out the ancient threat 
of non-support and will be driven to the ridicu¬ 
lous position of alternately pleading appetite on 
the one hand, and on the other hand hinting at a 
return to the stone age and recourse to force of 
superior strength. 

With feelings of pity for such mental weak¬ 
lings, calling themselves men, and to quiet the 
unnecessary panic of fear which they had allowed 
to take possession of them, the physicians, both 


82 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


men and women, will answer in substance as 
follows: 

That the male sex through centuries of mere¬ 
tricious literature, art and lines of thought, has 
degraded the physical phenomenon of the sexual 
relation from a higher privilege to be earned by 
merit, into a mere habit, distress to be relieved 
or at best an appetite to be appeased. The insti¬ 
tution of marriage, however sacred its religious 
imagery, had become, under a system of man¬ 
made laws, a man invention. The purpose of 
such invention was to enslave woman under social 
exactions and penalties from which she had no 
escape or alternative but to submit to whatever 
was required of her by her lord and master. 
Under some conditions of high life the responsi¬ 
bility of providing which the man had to assume, 
even at the trouble of work, and the idle and care¬ 
free life the woman was permitted to live, seemed 
to offer some compensation for her sexual slav¬ 
ery. She expressed herself as quite agreeable 
to the arrangement which, in her opinion, could 
not be improved upon. It has always been that 
a slave’s eyes are shut to its own degradation 
whenever it is allowed a sufficient degree of idle¬ 
ness and self-indulgence. 

Furthermore, it has been proven by those men 
who have been deprived of their liberty for a 
considerable length of time, that their health never 
suffered from enforced continence, but, on the 
contrary, improved. In cases of unusual virility, 
nature kindly comes to the rescue with romantic 


THE ISOLATION 83 

dreams, and neither the body or mind suffers any 
irreparable mischief, if any mischief at all. 

However, under any circumstances, there are 
frequent and protracted periods when, from one 
natural cause or another, a woman is temporarily 
incapable of conceiving. Considerable time must 
also elapse before she becomes fully cognizant of 
having done so, and the power to conceive ceases 
altogether at a comparatively early age. 

Assuming then, that the number of men and 
women of suitable age to be consorts are about 
equal, that no unnatural means are resorted to 
for the purpose of preventing conception and no 
greater frequency of child bearing than that pro¬ 
posed is contemplated, then, in that case, every 
male will have all the genital sensation that is 
good for him and he will consequently continue to 
hold the conjugal privilege in proper esteem and 
respect. 

Those competent to judge will have also become 
convinced that cohabitation is a constant tempta¬ 
tion to excess, as well as a great danger to the 
innocent party whenever the other of them in¬ 
dulges in promiscuous amours. 

Such conduct is almost inevitable when undue 
indulgence renders them unresponsive to each 
other and prompts them to resort to the stimulus 
of new personalities to continue in the gratification 
of a lust that has now become a mania and quite 
uncontrollable. 

It is true that ninety and nine out of every hun¬ 
dred intelligent and constant young couples will 


84 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 

never come to such a pass, but the one that does, 
is altogether one too many. It is sure to do fright¬ 
ful mischief to the race, extending over many 
years and bringing down horrible suffering upon 
innocent heads. 

As in the case of the liquor or opium habit, the 
ninety and nine will be glad to submit to needless 
prohibition and exactions in order that the one 
may not fall victim to temptation with all the at¬ 
tendant train of woe that would be sure to follow. 

Accordingly, it will be finally and irrevocably 
decreed to isolate the sexes permanently and so 
to protect them from themselves and from each 
other. This will be accomplished by making it 
impossible for them to enter into any conjugal 
relations, except under conditions that will afford 
a guarantee of absolute safety to both persons 
and also to the STATE, which has assumed to 
take care of the consequences. 

Beginning on a predetermined and duly adver¬ 
tised date, all private residences without any ex¬ 
ception, that remain occupied, will be declared 
disorderly, because ungovernable, and absolutely 
and permanently closed by the police. The build¬ 
ings will be remodeled for lodging houses as here¬ 
inafter described, or converted to whatever other 
use they may be suited for. The venerable institu¬ 
tion heretofore known as home will be no more. 
There will be something better to take its place. 

A man’s house will no longer be a potential 
nest of vice. It will no longer be his castle in 
which to keep his dungeon cells or chamber of 


THE ISOLATION 


85 


horrors, and the individual can no longer practice 
within his or her walls any abominations that can 
be concealed from the outside. 

All males and females shall, on or before such 
date, betake themselves respectively to lodging 
houses to be tenanted exclusively by their own sex, 
taking such of their effects as their new quarters 
can accommodate. There they will take up their 
respective abodes and establish their virtuous 
couches with due formalities. 

The lodging houses tenanted by women will be 
conducted in every detail by women, and be in¬ 
accessible at all times to males under any pretenses 
whatever, with the following exceptions: 

Mechanics employed to make necessary repairs 
will be admitted for the purpose of doing their 
work and while on the premises will be continu¬ 
ally under the eye of female police. Male phy¬ 
sicians called in as specialists, will be admitted 
only when accompanied by the female physician 
who is attending the patient, or when in con¬ 
sultation with a female physician in connection 
with a prenuptial medical examination. All 
arrests, whenever they occur, will be made by 
female police, and in case of explosion or fire 
that gets beyond the control of the inmates, it is 
presumed that any man found on the premises 
with no adequate reason for being there will be 
summarily dealt with. 

In like manner, the men’s lodging houses will be 
exclusively peopled and operated by men, whether 
manager or servant. No men will be allowed to 


86 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 

bring any woman into the house at any time or 
under any circumstances, excepting that a female 
physician may be admitted as a specialist or in 
connection with a prenuptial examination, if duly 
accompanied by the male physician of the patient 
or examinee. 

The isolation of the sexes, while in the houses 
where they sleep, will be absolute. 

Such houses will be equipped with parlors for 
receiving and entertaining guests of their own sex, 
for whom they will also provide sleeping accom¬ 
modations when necessary. 

There will also be dining-rooms, tea-rooms, 
music-rooms, libraries, swimming pools, gymna¬ 
siums and in short all the comforts of a completely 
appointed hotel for one sex only. 

There will, of course, be houses of different 
degrees of elegance for different rates of charges 
or people of different degres of wealth, and the 
private apartments of the guests will range all 
the way from one bedroom to a suite of parlors, 
chambers and private baths. 

The men and women will meet, however, at 
business, at church, at the theatre, the opera, the 
concert, the lecture, the library, or the museum, 
as well as on the street, at the athletic fields, on 
the excursion or in the park. They will have the 
same freedom that they always have had to form 
acquaintances and display their accomplishments. 
They will all have their clothes on, however, and 
be under public observation. There will be no 


THE ISOLATION 87 

accommodations or opportunity for any form of 
disorderly dalliance. 

All hotels for the accommodation of travelers, 
all ocean steamships, all river night boats and Pull¬ 
man sleepers will be divided into two distinct parts 
for the exclusive use of each sex while slumbering. 
The two parts will communicate in such a way as 
to permit husbands and wives, or traveling com¬ 
panions of opposite sexes to be together in public. 
It will, however, be impossible for them to be to¬ 
gether alone and beyond the reach of interruption. 
They may escape from observation by penetrating 
the forest or jungle, but there will no longer be 
unregulated public accommodations in which the 
sexes can be together in private. 

All persons reaching the age of twenty years, 
after transmitting advices of residence and por¬ 
traits to their respective birth houses will receive 
therefrom in return, a definite number of half¬ 
tone copies of their full face portraits. These 
copies will be on special fine grade paper about 
3 by 5 inches in size and have printed on the 
back the nativity number of themselves and 
parents, as appear in the registry of their birth 
and on their individual tablets. 

The instruments will be the official identification 
docket, and bear the date of issue and the signa¬ 
ture immediately under the picture, which will be 
known to have been taken by an official photog¬ 
rapher on the birth day antedating by a few days 
the printing of the copies at the birth house. They 
will be used on all occasions, in business, society 


88 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


or private relation requiring such identification 
until the next ensuing birthday. After receiving 
the subsequent portrait and advice, the birth house 
will issue a new lot of dockets to the address given 
and bearing the succeeding years date under the 
new picture. 

Only during the period of dependency can the 
guardian attend to the annual transmission of the 
child’s portrait for the birth house files. 

After the age of twenty years, it will rest en¬ 
tirely on the sense of duty of the adults and the 
degree of punctiliousness that will characterize 
their attitude in the matter. 

It will be very natural in many instances for 
persons to neglect such detail, but the tendency to 
carelessness will be prevented by the knowledge 
that if they do neglect to conform to such require¬ 
ments they will fail for a whole year to obtain 
any identification dockets. Failure to obtain these 
dockets will expose them to great inconvenience, 
embarrassment and maybe loss during the year 
they neglected to do so. This will automatically 
penalize their default and operate to deter them 
from neglecting to comply with so reasonable an 
exaction. 

A person who willfully goes into hiding and 
refuses to give an account of himself or herself 
will lose all legal identity and be incapable of 
entering into any form of contract, whether for 
love or money. Even then it is highly improbable 
that he or she can succeed in long concealing the 


THE ISOLATION 89 

fact of whom he or she be and will sooner or 
later be obliged to give up the secret. 

All persons, upon reaching the age of twenty- 
years, will select and retain a practising physician 
of the same sex, who shall be known and recog¬ 
nized as their personal physician. Physicians will 
name their successors in practice in case of death, 
and any other change desired by any patient can 
only be made by complying with prescribed formal¬ 
ities, whereby a complete transfer of all pertinent 
record will be made to the physician who succeeds. 

Such personal physician will have permanent 
and complete charge of the patient’s health and 
physical wellbeing, regardless of how frequently 
there may be occasion for medical services, and 
accordingly will be admitted to the patient’s lodg¬ 
ings without hindrance or delay at any hour of the 
day or night. 

The name, nativity number and practising li¬ 
cense number of the physician will be made the 
subject of a document to be transmitted to the 
birth house of each patient and placed in the per¬ 
sonal portfolio. 

At birth houses and nurseries, resident physician 
will be in charge of each case. 

When the young folks reach the legal and suit¬ 
able age and proceed to look for a mate, the man 
must win the confidence, admiration and love of a 
financially independent woman as well trained and 
proficient as himself. He must not only know how 
to please her by his personality but convince her 
that he is the man she wants to be the parent of 


9 o A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


her child. On the other hand, neither the youth 
nor the maid will be confronted with the problems 
of organizing a domestic establishment, of pro¬ 
viding for the bride during confinement or for the 
child when born. Every necessity of a financial 
or material kind will be as free as the air they 
breathe and the only assurance to be required is 
the sincerity of their mutual attachment. 

Either party may therefore take the initiative 
and in due course declare their passion. Before 
any consummation thereof is possible, however, 
they must first comply with certain legal and un¬ 
avoidable requirements. 

If at any time, the young lovers wish to know 
each other better and under different surround¬ 
ings, before becoming committed as consorts, they 
may elect to do either of the following things: 

To accompany each other after business hours 
to places of amusement or, if the resources of 
either or both of them allow, and their business 
engagements permit, they may take a trip together 
across the continent or across the ocean, before 
being even ostensibly engaged. There will be no 
need of a chaperone. The perfect system of isola¬ 
tion in vogue will have made it perfectly proper, 
under such conditions, to take journeys together. 
Under present usage, such conduct would be haz¬ 
ardous in the extreme. Reputation, if not morals, 
would now suffer, because making immorality so 
easy. Human morals will have been made fool¬ 
proof. There will be no temptation to misbehave, 
because misbehaving will be impossible. 


THE ISOLATION 


9i 


When finally deciding to be consorts, the young 
people will exchange identification dockets and 
memoranda of their respective physicians. 

The youth and the maid will each take the 
docket received from the other, and together with 
one of their own, they will transmit them to their 
own birth house with an application for a mar¬ 
riage license. Each of them must procure such 
license independently of the other. 

The application which each will send to his or 
her own birth house will be accompanied by both 
dockets or portraits and contain the identification 
numbers and signatures of both parties to the pro¬ 
posed nuptials and the names and addresses of 
their respective personal physicians. 

The application of each lover will be filed at 
his or her respective birth house and placed in 
his or her private portfolio. Marriage licenses 
will then be granted by both birth houses. The 
license granted to the bride by her birth house 
will contain first her name and nativity number, 
second, the grooms name and nativity number, 
third, the name and address of her physician, and 
fourth, the name and address of the groom’s 
physician. 

It will also have securely attached in places 
provided therefor, the two portraits which accom¬ 
panied the application. The portrait of the bride 
will occupy the left top corner, and that of the 
groom the right top corner. 

The license granted the groom by his birth 
house will be identical in substance to that issued 


92 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


to the bride. The groom’s portrait, however, will 
be on the left, and the brides’ on the right top 
corner. The groom’s name and nativity number 
and also the name and address of his physician, 
will be stated first and those of the bride last in 
each instance. 

The documentary evidence will then show that 
they have concurrently, mutually and separately 
obtained licenses from their respective birth houses 
or places of registration, that they have regularly 
reported thereto, and that there is nothing there 
on file that disqualifies them from entering into a 
union. 

The license will then be transmitted by their 
respective birth houses to their respective physi¬ 
cians at the addresses given. The bride’s license 
will be sent to her physician, and the groom’s 
license will be sent to his physician, who will both 
receive them in due course. 

The physicians will then meet, enter into joint 
consultation and in each other’s presence will be 
admitted to the lodgings of both bride and groom, 
where, in a room especially appointed therefor, 
in both of the respective lodgings, the bride and 
groom will in turn be subjected to a thorough and 
searching physical examination by both of the 
physicians simultaneously and jointly. 

The physicians, still acting in concert, will, over 
their joint signatures, in a place upon the license 
provided therefor, enter their findings in one or 
the other of three comprehensive words as the 
case may be, viz.: i—Potential; 2—Sterile; 3— 


THE ISOLATION 


93 


Ineligible. In case of finding 3 applying to either 
party, both licenses will be marked “rejected” and 
returned to the respective birth houses for cancel¬ 
lation. The incident will be closed. 

In case of findings 1 and 2 the licenses will be 
given to the bride and groom with the approval 
and blessing of both of their physicians. 

In most instances finding 2 will be a matter of 
personal knowledge of the examinee’s own physi¬ 
cian which, if it be known to be a fact, the physi¬ 
cian will be in duty bound to report for the in¬ 
formation of both parties concerned. 

The young couple, after comparing the findings 
of their physicians, in each case may still deter¬ 
mine whether to go on with the romance or volun¬ 
tarily return the license to the birth houses for 
cancellation. 

Upon returning their licenses while they are 
still in their possession, they regain their freedom 
to try again in the way provided. 

The question of the marriage rite or ceremony 
will then become a matter of religious scruple only. 
The state will not require more than the precau¬ 
tions provided by the marriage license and the 
medical certificate of a male and female physician 
in consultation. 

There will be, however, no benefit and possibly 
harm in forbidding religious solemnity and tradi¬ 
tion or discouraging conjugal constancy arising 
from psychological causes too deep and mysterious 
to trifle with. Accordingly, wedding bells will con¬ 
tinue to ring, and parents, relatives and friends of 


94 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


the bridal couple will continue to attend the church 
wedding and the marriage feast, wherever and 
whenever the parties to the nuptials are so dis¬ 
posed and voluntarily inclined. 

No license will be granted to anybody for whom 
a license is still outstanding. No person can have 
more than one consort at a time and therefore 
must be off with the old before being on with the 
new. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE CONTACT 

The next step in the lovers’ programme will be 
to engage their bridal chambers. These can only 
be procured at legally constituted assignation 
houses organized and conducted according to law 
for nuptial appointments only. The procedure will 
be first personally and simultaneously to deposit 
their marriage licenses at the office of the house at 
which they will be assigned to private rooms. The 
licenses of both bride and groom will be kept in 
separate files, and as in all other cases the nativity 
numbers will be the index to the files. 

The inhabitants of these houses will come and 
go only in pairs and while there, they will be 
closeted in their own apartments and dependent 
solely upon each other for entertainment, except 
when in the auditorium. The apartments which 
they will engage anew for each time of occupancy 
and must surrender at or before the end of twenty- 
four hours, will be furnished and decorated in 
varying degrees of costliness, consistent with the 
rental charges. 

Accordingly, they will only occupy their bridal 
chambers when they have occasion to do so, and at 
all other time will be either alone at their lodg- 
95 


96 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 

ings, at business, or together at some place of 
public amusement, where they will find a greater 
variety, if not a greater intensity of enjoyment. 

The only ingress or egress to or from their 
apartment^ will be through the office, where certain 
formalities will be gone through with on every 
occasion of occupancy. They will approach a 
common desk or two desks standing side by side. 
A man clerk behind one desk will face the groom, 
and a woman clerk behind the other desk will face 
the bride as they present themselves and announce 
their respective nativity numbers. Each clerk will 
thereupon take the license from the file rack and 
after identifying the party by the portrait, will 
endorse on the back of the license the current day’s 
date. The man clerk will then hand the groom 
the key to the bridal chamber and the woman clerk 
will hand the bride a small ticket containing four 
dates. The pair will then proceed at once to 
occupy the apartment assigned to them. 

The four dates on the card given to the bride 
will be understood by her to signify: first, the cur¬ 
rent days’ date as entered on both the licenses, 
her own and the groom’s before restoring them to 
the file; second, the date when she may first expect 
to feel life and should reserve her room in the 
birth house; third, the date when she should take 
possession of her reservation, and fourth, the date 
upon which she will bear a child, or two hundred 
and eighty days from the first date given. This 
card will be her calendar only in the event of there 


THE CONTACT 


97 

being a sequel to the present occasion, otherwise 
it may be thrown away. 

Whenever licenses shall be deposited in any 
assignation house, they will be registered in a 
book to be kept for such purpose. The house 
will then become the custodian of the licenses and 
responsible for the safe return to the birth house 
by whom issued, unless transferred to the birth 
house wherein the bride becomes confined. At the 
time the bride makes her resrvation she will direct 
that both the licenses of herself and the groom be 
transmitted to the birth house that she will desig¬ 
nate. The licenses must be received at the birth 
house before a room can be reserved for the bride. 
In the event that there are no licenses in exist¬ 
ence, the case will be committed to a criminal 
ward and sterilization after delivery will be the 
inevitable procedure of the authorities. 

If, for any reason, the bridal couple wish to 
change their nuptial residence either to the next 
street or to another state, they must first deter¬ 
mine, locate and identify the new house they wish 
to occupy and upon making proper application, the 
licenses will be formally transferred from the old 
to the new house. 

Under no circumstances, however, will the bride 
and groom again get physical possession of their 
licenses after they have once been deposited in a 
house of assignation. Every time that they to¬ 
gether occupy private apartments, it must be at 
a house wherein the licenses are on file, and the 
date of the occasion must be endorsed on each 


98 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


license. Either the bride or groom may, at any 
time after two hundred and eighty days have 
elapsed since the last date endorsed on the license, 
visit the assignation house alone and direct that 
both licenses be returned to their respective birth 
houses for cancellation. 

Whenever the bride becomes confined, the mar¬ 
riage license will automatically terminate and the 
legal relationship of consorts will automatically 
cease. Both the bride’s and groom’s copy of the 
license will be already in the custody of the birth 
house, where they will afford irrefutable evidence 
as to the parentage of the child. 

When the child is born, both licenses will each 
be returned to the birth house where granted and 
there cancelled. The romance will have turned its 
full circle and be complete. The father is now free 
to form a new attachment if he elects to do so, in 
which case he must repeat the entire procedure and 
conform to such requirements over again. 

The mother, when she graduates from the nur¬ 
sery, will also be free, when so inclined, to repeat 
the same experience, either with the same consort, 
if mutually agreeable, or with a new consort if 
it so come to pass. In either case the same pro¬ 
cedure must be gone through and the same exac¬ 
tions complied with as attached to her first child. 
The interval, however, is entirely under her own 
control 

In case the entire space on the back of the 
license for noting the dates of meeting becomes 
filled, and there is still no prospects of issue or 


THE CONTACT 


99 


intention to cancel the license, the relationship 
may continue unchanged and separate documents 
may be provided and attached to receive further 
notations. If, however, the parties wish still to 
be constant to each other until death, they may 
have their licenses stamped across the face “Mutu¬ 
ally Sterile,” and given into their personal posses¬ 
sion with the knowledge and approval of their 
respective birth houses and upon the recommenda¬ 
tion of their respective physicians. Such licenses 
will gain admission for them in any house of as¬ 
signation without the necessity of being there on 
file except during the hours of occupancy. Ac¬ 
cordingly, they are free to change their place of 
residence as often as agreeable or travel continu¬ 
ally if they wish. After their licenses have been 
so stamped and given into their possession, they 
cannot again cancel the old and obtain a new 
while both survive, but must remain committed 
to each other alone. 

This privilege will only be granted, however, 
where either one or the other is certified as sterile, 
or the woman has passed the child bearing age. 
As long, however, as there is the remotest possi¬ 
bility of the woman becoming a mother, any mar¬ 
riage license which she may possess at such time 
must be on file and in the custody of an authorized 
assignation house. All possibility of the license 
getting lost or parted and the situation thereby 
getting beyond control will be obviated. 

It is foolish to attempt to evade the primary 
truth that man is a functioning biological organ- 


100 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


ism. The elementary functions are those of loco¬ 
motion, assimilation and reproduction. The first 
two are merely necessary and subordinate to the 
third. The fulfillment of conscious existence, the 
purpose of being and the supreme function of life 
is the perpetuation of the species. The living 
being that fails to reproduce itself, fails to func¬ 
tion. The male or female that is denied children 
is denied the power to fulfill its purpose. This 
nature tells us in a thousand different ways. On 
every hand, in both animal and vegetable life, we 
see the irrefutable evidence of reproduction. All 
forms of life come under the same dominating 
law. The human race is no exception to the gen¬ 
eral rule. 

It is generally understood, either consciously or 
subconsciously, that to behold beauty of face and 
form in the opposite sex arouses and stimulates 
amorous desires. 

This is supposed to be most pronounced, al¬ 
though not exclusively, in the male, and under 
perfectly healthy and normal physical conditions 
it is reasonable to assume that both sexes share 
equally in the operation of the law. 

The desires thus aroused are so interwoven 
with the love of beauty for beauty’s sake and 
with the critical understanding and appreciation 
of the artistic, that the mere promise of pleasur¬ 
able touch and titillation is quite lost sight of for 
the moment in the admiration and wonder that 
the sight of bodily beauty awakens in even a 
child, incapable as yet of any other reaction. 


THE CONTACT 


IOI 


But the sensual in nature is very persistent 
in coming to the surface and making its presence 
known. While the stimulation of the poetic and 
platonic passions is delightful to experience, it is 
quite evident that the design of nature is to awaken 
the animal passions as well. By suggestion of the 
possible pleasure of sensation, nature lures us to 
taste its sweets and so keeps the species from 
becoming extinct. Were personal attachment and 
the sole love of creating life and ministering to 
its needs at the expense of our own ease the 
only inducements, it is doubtful if they would be 
sufficient to overcome our disinclination to assume 
the burden. 

The modern emotional dancer performs in the 
finest class of auditorium, before cultured and 
critical audiences, in her bare feet and in a cos¬ 
tume so light and diaphanous as to leave nothing 
to the imagination. Moving with the grace that 
only perfect health, physical culture and artistic 
training can inspire, she creates a picture of tran¬ 
scendent beauty and loveliness. All cynical criti¬ 
cism is at once disarmed and it becomes quite im¬ 
possible to even think, much less believe, that the 
purpose underlying the beautiful exhibition could 
have originated in obscene or lewd imaginings. 

The theory that “skin is sin, and the more skin 
the more sin,” formed the basis of an attack by 
an anti-vice society, on one of the most beautiful 
paintings ever exhibited. Because of its freedom 
from the slightest tinge of wantonness and the 
consequent high place it had established in the 


102 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


public esteem, the attack broke down and replicas 
of “September Morn” have since been added to 
numerous collections. It can now be found both 
in the portfolios and on the walls of the most 
scrupulous and exacting people, who unhesitatingly 
admit their admiration of its beauty. 

The human mind is so constituted that it always 
has and always will love to look upon the phy¬ 
sical beauty of its own species, and entertain an 
innate conviction that it has the inalienable right 
to do so. It is as futile to forbid looking, as to 
forbid breathing, and it is merely a matter of 
wise regulation concerning the time, place and cir¬ 
cumstances. 

Public exhibitions that unduly stimulate the 
sexual instinct are wisely held to be immoral. 
Regardless of the ugliness or beauty of the players 
or of the acts and situations portrayed, they are 
prohibited by law except in admittedly immoral 
countries. 

As long, however, as the exhibitions contain 
nothing revolting or gruesomely pathetic, but only 
that which is normal, happy and beautiful, they 
are perfectly proper scenes to be witnessed, studied 
and sympathetically enjoyed by bridal couples 
about to enter upon the raptures of their conjugal 
rights. The greater the preparatory stimulation 
that can be engendered, the more ecstatic the grati¬ 
fication of the passion that ensues. 

The new estimate of woman as man’s equal, has 
emancipated her from subordination to him. It 
has abolished the feudal idea of her submission 


THE CONTACT 


103 


to his every whim, without regard to her own 
tastes and inclinations in the premises. This new 
order quite precludes the oriental idea of the 
groom requiring the bride to perform an Arabic 
muscle dance or give him any other manifestation 
of her voluptuousness. Some other expedient 
must be adopted if it becomes desirable to tone 
him up for his contemplated orgasm. 

There, however, will be no objection to both 
bride and groom being afforded suggestive en¬ 
tertainment of a proper kind at such time. 

It is quite reasonable to assume that the lovers 
will mutually conspire to make each event a suc¬ 
cess. The more temperate of either will discour¬ 
age any greater frequency than is physically bene¬ 
ficial, and so impose a wholesome restraint upon 
the other. 

Accordingly, each assignation house will be 
equipped with a comfortable auditorium contain¬ 
ing a stage upon which actors may perform, or at 
least a screen upon which an operator can project 
motion pictures. The plays or pictures will be of 
characteristic subjects calculated to dispel abstract 
meditation and focus the minds of the audience on 
the dominating object of their presence. 

The bridal couples about to occupy their private 
chambers will visit the auditorium and watch the 
entertainment until in their opinion they are in a 
proper frame of mind to continue their own pro¬ 
gram. 

The subjects to be portrayed upon the stage or 
screen will have educational value pertinent to the 


io 4 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


governing consideration of the parties present. 
They accordingly will be invoked to excite emula¬ 
tion and can be critically studied for the informa¬ 
tion they will impart or the entertainment they 
will afford. 

The range selected for the studies to be ex¬ 
hibited will be limited only by excluding every¬ 
thing that would be objectionable and depressing 
to the spirits. Every class of portrayal that will 
be engaging and exhilarating, no matter how 
sacred, will be freely made bare before the high 
priests of the race, who alone will be present. 

Young people gifted with extraordinary grace 
and beauty of face and form will, for the pleasure 
of their race, and liberal consideration for their 
services, act either on the stage or before the 
motion camera under ideal illuminating arrange¬ 
ments. In their performances they will realize 
all the poetry of motion and mobility of facial 
and bodily expression and suggestion that a nat¬ 
ural and gifted artist can bring to the interpreta¬ 
tion of a passion and the portrayal of the suc¬ 
cessive and component phases. 

In consequence of the unique conditions under 
which these exhibitions will be given and the highly 
specialized purpose that they will serve, a distinc¬ 
tive class of drama and individual histrionics will 
develop, that would be impossible under present 
conditions. While free from the vulgarities and 
obscenities that deform so much of the present- 
day drama, they will abound in features of realism 


THE CONTACT 


105 


that could not be safely ventured in any other 
place. 

Accordingly the public playhouse to which the 
people resort for comedy, tragedy, music and 
vaudeville will be relatively the same as today, 
making due allowance for the change of public 
taste and the new themes that will absorb public 
interest. 

The inducement to beget children will change 
from unavoidable necessity to substantial oppor¬ 
tunity. Only parents of record will be eligible 
for positions of high authority and command. 
There will be numerous occupations, skilled and 
unskilled, that will be open to both young and 
old, in which the question of parenthood will not 
enter. Officers of an executive character and re¬ 
quiring experience and judgment as essential con¬ 
comitants, however, will be filled only by fathers 
and mothers. All other things being equal, 
parenthood will count fifty per cent, in the quali¬ 
fication for many positions not absolutely out of 
the reach of the childless. The greater possi¬ 
bilities of the career open to fathers and mothers 
will afford a strong reason for winning and wed¬ 
ding a fruitful consort. One child will be suf¬ 
ficient for either parent to qualify and there will 
be no bounty offered for big families. Quality 
and not quantity will be the main desideratum. 
Strength and efficiency of body and mind will 
count for more than numbers. They will do 
best for their country who give the ablest off¬ 
spring. 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE GENEALOGY. 

Under the new order of things it will be pos¬ 
sible for every person to obtain a full genealogical 
record since the beginning of human registration. 
In order to take advantage of such possibility to 
the full, a standard and logical method of assign¬ 
ing proper names will be adopted. 

Every child will receive three names, consist¬ 
ing of one given name indicating sex, and two 
family names indicating the stock on the side 
of each parent. The given name and first family 
name will be the same as those of the parent of 
the same sex and the last name will be the family 
name of the parent of the opposite sex, that is to 
say, the second name of said parent, for example: 
Paul Freeman Matthews, a man and 
Elizabeth Nightingale Blauvelt, a woman, 
are the parents of two children, a boy and girl, 
who are full brother and sister. The children will 
accordingly be named 
Paul Freeman Nightingale (boy), 

Elizbeth Nightingale Freeman (girl). 

Assuming as an alternative that both children 
106 


THE GENEALOGY 


107 

are boys and full brothers, then their names will be 
Paul Freeman Nightingale, 

Paul Freeman Nightingale Second. 

Or if both children are girls and full sisters 
their names will be 

Elizabeth Nightingale Freeman, 
Elizabeth Nightingale Freeman Second. 

After the birth of the younger of two full broth¬ 
ers or of two full sisters, the older will append the 
word “First” to his or her name. This will 
show that after either of the older children there 
had been born to the same parents a younger child 
of the same sex and conversely that before either 
of the younger children there had been born to the 
same parents an older child of the same sex. 

As full brothers of brothers, and full sisters of 
sisters will be the exception, and half brothers 
and sisters, where of the same sex, the most prob¬ 
able, there will be little occasion to affix the word 
“second,” less occasion to fix the word “third,” 
and least to affix the word “fourth.” The greater 
number of instances in which it does occur will be 
in the case of twins and triplets of the same sex. 

In order therefore for persons to compile their 
own genealogical record, they will first consult 
the records of their own nativity, either on the 
tablets worn upon their own persons, or on the 
yearbooks of their own birth houses. 

These books will be found, in each case, at the 
genealogical library of the nearest birth house in 
their immediate vicinities. 

After learning the nativity numbers of their 


io8 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


parents, they will in turn consult the records of 
each parent’s birth and so learn the nativity num¬ 
ber of their grandparents. They will proceed in 
this manner until they have collected the requisite 
data to construct their family tree or pedigree, 
which will be in diagrammatic form. 

In constructing the diagram, it will be assumed 
that we ascend from our ancestors and not de¬ 
scend, that time is rising, not falling. The roots 
of the family tree are in the ground and the 
present generation is the top branches. In every 
record the person who stands for the ultimation 
is that top leaf and will appear at the top of 
the diagram. 

The first outline of each genealogical record 
will form one diagram and occupy one page in 
the book of pedigree, varying in depth according 
to the number of generations to be considered. 
It will begin at the top with the name of the per¬ 
son whose pedigree is the subject of the compila¬ 
tion and descend in two columns. The column 
on the left hand will be the direct ascent on the 
side of the ascendant’s own sex, and the column 
on the right, the direct ascent of the opposite sex. 
These will be the lines of descent as we go down 
into the past, the most remote ancestors being at 
the bottom. If the record goes further into the 
past than one page can accommodate, it will be 
continued on a second page and if need be, a third. 
The principle of its construction, however, will 
limit it to two columns only, as just explained. 

The outline of the genealogical record of Paul 


THE GENEALOGY 


109 

Freeman Nightingale and that of his full sister, 
Elizabeth, would accordingly look like this: 

Paul Freeman Nightingale. 

Paul Freeman Matthews Elizabeth Nightingale Blauvelt 
Paul Freeman Anderson Elizabeth Nightingale Beaconfield 
Paul Freeman Wesley Elizabeth Nightingale Lovelace 
Paul Freeman Chapman Elizabeth Nightingale Griswold 
Paul Freeman Remington Elizabeth Nightingale Donaldson 
Elizabeth Nightingale Freeman. 

Elizabeth Nightingale Blauvelt Paul Freeman Matthews 
Elizabeth Nightingale Beaconfield Paul Freeman Anderson 
Elizabeth Nightingale Lovelace Paul Freeman Wesley 
Elizabeth Nightingale Griswold Paul Freeman Chapman 
Elizabeth Nightingale Donaldson Paul Freeman Remington 
Accordingly we see that Paul Freeman Night¬ 
ingale is the son of Paul Freeman Matthews, who 
was the son of Paul Freeman Anderson, who in 
turn was the son of Paul Freeman Wesley, and 
so on. Beyond indicating that the family names 
of his paternal grandmother and great-grand¬ 
mothers, going backward, were processively 
Matthews, Anderson, Wesley, Chapman and 
Remington, nothing further concerning their given 
names and fathers’ names will appear at this stage 
of the record. The record on the paternal side 
will regard only the lines of males. In order to 
learn the full name of any of the paternal grand¬ 
mothers as indicated by the third name of each 
male ancestor, it will be necessary to examine each 
of the said male ancestor’s individual birth rec¬ 
ord, whereupon genealogical research on the side 
of their respective mothers can be made. 

It will be observed in the outline of Paul’s 
genealogy, that his first and second name and 
those of his father, grandfather and all male 
ancestors on his father’s side are constant, but 


110 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


as to the third or last name they all terminate 
differently. There will consequently be no occa¬ 
sion to use the suffix junior, unless the family 
name of the boy’s paternal grandmother happens 
to be the same as that of his own mother. In 
such case the full name of both father and son 
would be the same and require the suffix Jr. to 
the son’s name in order to distinguish him from 
his father. 

The same law that governs the structure of the 
genealogical outline of Paul applies also to that 
of his sister Elizabeth in every detail. It will be 
observed, however, that in her case the place of 
honor which is the first or left, is given to the 
mother and grandmother, while on the last or 
right side appears the father and grandfathers. 

In both cases, however, only the line of each 
parent’s own sex is shown and the particulars of 
maternal grandfathers and paternal grandmothers 
will, in every instance, form the subject of a new 
diagram. 

All persons, therefore, will have a name of 
their own which they will acquire from both par¬ 
ents, two-thirds from the parent of their own sex 
and one-third from the parent of the opposite 
sex. The man will cease to give the woman the 
“protection of his name,” because she will have 
no greater need of his name than he will have 
for her name. Her identity is no more swallowed 
up by his, than is his identity swallowed up by 
her’s. They each own a whole personality and 
name of their own and will continue to do so. 


THE GENEALOGY 


hi 


If, however, for any reason of religious scruple, 
sentiment or expediency, either party wants their 
name to disclose the fact that they have chosen 
a consort for life, they may take the family name 
of the chosen consort as the fourth name of their 
own. In order to do so, however, they must 
advise their respective birth houses of their de¬ 
termination to constancy. The birth houses will 
thereupon issue them licenses stamped “constant,” 
or order outstanding licenses to be returned to be 
so stamped and registered. Licenses so stamped 
cannot be cancelled while both parties survive nor 
can the step be rescinded when once taken. There 
will be no trifling allowed with the conjugal rela¬ 
tions. 

Before each name in the left hand column and 
after each name in the right hand column will be 
a rectangle surmounttd by a ring. In the rec¬ 
tangle will be the nativity number and in the ring 
the date and reference number to the biographical 
synopsis described later. 

The nativity number of each parent and grand¬ 
parent will be the index to the data for construct¬ 
ing a corresponding diagram for them which will 
follow on succeeding pages, one to a page. 

In the male genealogy, the diagrams of the 
father and paternal grandfather and great-grand¬ 
fathers in turn, will occupy the pages next succeed¬ 
ing the outline and the diagrams of the mother, 
grandmother and great-grandmothers, will follow 
in order. In the female genealogy, the diagrams 
of the mother, grandmother and great-grand- 


I 12 


A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


mothers will take precedence over the father, 
grandfather and great-grandfathers, but in all 
other respects the same general rules governing 
male and female alike will apply. 

Corresponding diagrams will then be prepared 
for each paternal grandmother and great-grand¬ 
mother, as well as for each maternal grandfather 
and great-grandfather, to the extent that it is de¬ 
sirable to go. It will be possible either to follow 
the direct male and female line as shown in the 
first outline back to the beginning or going back 
only a few generations to carry the inquiry into all 
the allied branches arising from the dual parent¬ 
age of each ancestor on both sides. 

In every instance, the diagram at each develop¬ 
ment will be the control or index of the diagrams 
of the next development. Each diagram will be 
the outline of an ancestors’ pedigree and for 
that reason the loose leaf form of binder will be 
universally used. 

Whenever any person in the entire world of 
registered population gains distinction in science, 
art, literature, leadership or any other field of 
achievement or endeavor, a definite plan will be 
followed whereby a permanent and instantly avail¬ 
able record of the facts will be made. 

Such persons will, as in the past, become the 
subject of general interest and newspaper no¬ 
toriety and many details will be written, read and 
remembered. In addition to all popular forms of 
interest and recognition, the birth house of every 
such person’s nativity will prepare a brief synopsis 


THE GENEALOGY 


ii 3 

of the performance, discovery or circumstance that 
has distinguished him or her. Each such synopsis 
will be as full and rich in detail as can be compre¬ 
hended in a statutory number of words, which in 
a prescribed size of type can be printed on a 
standard size page to be universally employed for 
such purpose. Extending across the top margin 
of said page will be the nativity number of the 
celebrity, which will be the index to the great 
division of the file, next the year, day and refer¬ 
ence item number of the synopsis, which will be 
the index to the particular page or bulletin. 

Immediately under the top margin and in a clear 
rectangular space let down into the body of the 
printed matter, like an ornamental or illuminated 
initial, will be the portrait of the celebrity in 
miniature (about one-quarter size) taken from 
the most recent photograph. 

An edition equal in number to the existing birth 
houses will then be published and a copy trans¬ 
mitted to each of said birth houses in exchange 
for similar biographical publications of their own 
native personnel received in like manner from 
them. 

As all birth houses have exchanged yearly 
printed and bound copies of their birth register 
(as stated in Chapter 1), each house will now 
have not only a complete library of all the reg¬ 
istered births, but also a loose leaf file of bulle¬ 
tins of all deeds of fame in all parts of the world, 
as well as at all times since such records began. 

When each biographical bulletin is published or 


11 4 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 

received in exchange by a birth house, the year, 
day and reference number will be posted in the 
printed volume of the birth register in a space 
provided therefor at the end of the line or nativity 
record of the person to whom it refers. As there 
will be only space for one such notation in the 
printed birth register, it will be made on issue or 
receipt of the first bulletin. When succeeding 
bulletins concerning the same person are issued 
or received by each birth house, the date and 
reference number of the first one, as entered in the 
year book, will be noted on the back of each suc¬ 
ceeding one, and simultaneously and in turn, the 
date and reference number of each succeeding bul¬ 
letin will be noted in chronological order on the 
back of the first one. By this means the date 
and reference number entered against the printed 
birth record will point to the first bulletin, which, 
when taken out of the files, will have noted on its 
back the index to all other bulletins of the same 
celebrity on file. 

These may all be taken from the file, and from 
their collective stories a general epitome of the 
celebrity’s whole career may be sketched in con¬ 
venient size for collecting as a supporting volume 
to a genealogy in which said celebrity’s name 
appears. 

Whenever a person engaged in compiling a 
genealogical record comes across an ancestor 
against whose name there appears date and refer¬ 
ence number to a biographical bulletin, all ma¬ 
terial facts concerning such ancestor’s deeds or 


THE GENEALOGY 


ii5 

achievements will become at once accessible and 
such attention can be given to them, and such 
abstracts made, as the importance of the facts and 
the nearness or remoteness of the consanguinity 
seem to justify. All genealogical records can 
therefore be accompanied by a biographical digest 
of each ancestor and so enable lovers to show the 
full quality of their heredity and all acts of their 
ancestors in any direction or line of relationship 
for which they have reason to be proud. 

The function of every birth house will there¬ 
fore include a genealogical department open to 
the public in much the same way as a public library. 
In this department will be kept the year books and 
biographical bulletins accessible for use in connec¬ 
tion with genealogical and biographical research, 
which will be extensively carried on. 


CHAPTER X. 


THE PROPAGANDA. 

At the outset, this story will be regarded as in 
the category of simple fiction, with the additional 
interest that attaches to flights of the imagination 
coming within the realm of possibilities. 

The absence of anything approaching the super¬ 
natural or even mysterious will hold the readers 
to the contemplation of potential realities and 
keep their feet on the ground. There will be 
awakened only those qualities of speculation as 
have their origin in desire. 

The wish will be father to the thought and the 
idea of having the wish realized, if only in the 
distant future, and by generations yet to come, 
will smell sweet, claim attention and excite in¬ 
quiry into the essential details. The story will 
therefore be received with mixed emotions and 
ideas. 

There will be merely the picture side, or enter¬ 
tainment for the moment, while back of the super¬ 
ficial appearances and reactions there will be the 
subconscious approval and recognition of the 
serious side of the proposals and a dawning pur¬ 
pose to put them to practical use. 

ii6 


THE PROPAGANDA 


117 

The subject dealt with, is life in all of its 
radical details from the cradle to the grave. It 
will always be of supreme importance to every 
alert mind. It was equally important in popular 
estimation, a century ago. It is today and will 
pre-empt the thoughts with the same power and 
fascination a century hence. In any event, through 
the publication of this work and others that will 
follow from the impetus given the overspreading 
idea, will become standard and permanent. Until 
the basic concept is elaborated and enlivened by 
more graceful writers, this work will be read ex¬ 
tensively and with greater avidity as the impor¬ 
tance of the problems with which it deals become 
more and more matters of popular concern. 

The component ideas and their structural rela¬ 
tionship to each other and to the entire program 
will become generally known and people will come 
to recognize the idea as not only serious but sug¬ 
gestively constructive in a hopeful and practical 
way. 

It will only remain to remove the impediments 
to give the plan free action. Radicalism and 
conservatism will both be aroused and lock horns. 
Orators and writers, pro and con, will cross 
swords. Literature, advocating and attacking the 
expedients proposed will appear in many forms 
and many places. Books, magazines, news¬ 
papers and bulletins will enter the lists and the 
time-worn subjects of the equality of the sexes, 
free love, and the economic independence of 
woman will be fought all over again, although 


118 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


none of them have any bearing on the subject 
beyond what is purely incidental. 

While everybody will agree on the main issue, 
that every baby should have a fair chance, that 
all adults should give an account of themselves, 
and that those evils that have brought untold and 
needless misery upon the race, should be ex¬ 
terminated, there will still be a strong opposition 
to the employment of the only effective expedients. 
The multitude will say, “Let well enough alone; 
we are doing as well as can be expected,” etc. 

As is now the case with respect to the great 
questions of prohibition, single tax and woman 
suffrage, everyone will be found on one side or 
the other of the main questions involved in the 
regulations of registration, isolation and contact. 

From the moment the notion of making prac¬ 
tical application of the theory advanced enters 
the mind, nobody will entertain the slightest hope 
of living to see the promised benefits that will 
result from such measures. 

The only motive for attempting the Herculean 
task of changing the foundations of the world will 
be the belief that as surely as the present-day 
methods (from which we now suffer) will bring 
misery and pain on our posterity, so will the rad¬ 
ical changes in procedure comprehended in the 
proposed plan not only save them from the dire 
distress that impends, but give to them the hap¬ 
piness that excels any that is known in the present 
age. 

It will be self-evident that years must elapse 


THE PROPAGANDA 


119 

before even the outskirts of the promised land 
are reached. On the other hand, it will be ad¬ 
mitted that steps cannot be taken too soon, if 
even our great-grandchildren are to be given the 
protection, training and happiness that appear to 
us in the vision. 

Such radical measures as the establishment of 
birth houses, nurseries and kindergartens, on the 
lines indicated, marking the first step in the 
reformation proposed, will present no greater 
difficulties than the establishment of hospitals, jails 
or any other class of present-day institutions. 

The principal necessity will be funds, and in 
order to get funds there must be a general willing¬ 
ness to appropriate them. This willingness will 
arise from a popular and intelligent approval of 
the plan and of its ultimate objective. The pres¬ 
ent generation will assume the load in the interest 
of posterity, after coming fully to believe that 
posterity will be benefited to such an extent as 
will justify the making of the immediate sacrifice. 
The generations that are to profit will be quite 
beyond the reach of the burden. The time-hon¬ 
ored expedient of long term bonds will not avail, 
because no bonds can be made long enough to 
reach. It must be a work of love or not at all. 
Like the builders of ancient temples, who began 
their work with no hope of living to finish, and 
were consoled in the knowledge that some other 
hand would complete the task by them begun. 

The immediate prospect of instituting initial 
steps and making initial provisipn that will revo- 


120 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


lutionize the present methods of living and can 
of infants without any personal advantage to the 
mature of the present generation (who will be re¬ 
quired nevertheless to pay the piper), will meet 
with high resistance. 

The banker never was particularly keen about 
paying for the keep of the bootblack’s baby. How- 
beit, the babies, and the very little babies at that, 
will be the first to be folded in the sheltering 
arms. The birth house and the nursery will be 
the first upon the map and the rich will dig down 
deep into their jeans in consequence. 

The abolition of the home, the converting of all 
residences into legally regulated lodging houses 
and the exterminating of the loose, vicious and 
dangerous feature of the present-day marriage 
laws, will be still too remote to necessitate a fight. 
There will be no difficulty in keeping them on the 
calendar, and no law looking to their ultimate 
defeat will be allowed to pass. 

The general consensus of opinion will rest on 
the conviction that unless religion be supplemented 
by wise legislation and reasonable sacrifice for 
principle, the advance of civilization will move 
with glacier-like deliberation and a thousand years 
will be as a day. 

And so the time will pass, the future prophe¬ 
cies of the registration and institutional rearing 
of every child, the segregation of the sexes after 
reaching the age of ten years, the abolition of the 
private residence and the extermination of the 
social evil will become alternately the subjects of 


THE PROPAGANDA 


I 2 I 


mirth and melancholy. When considered in connec¬ 
tion with Asia, Africa and certain countries of 
Europe, famous for vice, and the insurmountable 
dffiiculties are apprehended, the mere idea of at¬ 
tempting to enforce such regulation will provoke 
a roar of laughter. On the other hand, when con¬ 
templating the frightful visitations that are con¬ 
stantly falling on the flower of the world’s popula¬ 
tion through the dangers against which they are 
not proof, and the growing census of the jails and 
madhouses of the banner states and nations of the 
world, there will come a cry to STOP IT. STOP 
IT IF IT TAKES A THOUSAND YEARS, 
BUT STOP IT. Begin now and let no more 
precious time be lost. 

After tears will come the smile of hope and 
an organized movement will arise to begin a 
programme that will lead in the shortest time to 
the full operation of all the laws and methods 
outlined or implied in the original plan, perfected 
by study or research and revised by the ablest 
experts in all parts of the globe. 

As a consequence of this movement, a party will 
be formed and information will be gathered from 
all parts of the world, concerning all conditions 
of wealth, morality, child opportunity, disease and 
insanity. 

Statistics will be compiled that will make the 
information available for pointed arguments and 
proselyting. Articles will be written showing 
where we are and whither we are going. The 
torments of the sufferers from existing conditions 


i22 A VISION OF THE FUTURE 


will be felt in every land (even as they are now, 
only worse), and wails of misery will be eloquent 
confirmation of the arguments being uttered for a 
radical change. 

When the movement is finally under way and 
the measures and supporting facts have been duly 
promulgated, a canvass will show a sufficient 
majority in a certain sovererign state, to insure the 
enactment of laws to put the principles advocated 
into effect. 

Accordingly, such country will be the first to 
start the reform which will promptly spread to 
adjoining countries. Similar movements will have 
been simultaneously developing in other parts of 
the world as the result of the world-wide trans¬ 
lation and dissemination of the proselyting litera¬ 
ture. Like grains of corn that have been slowly 
heating, they will begin to pop in the most unex¬ 
pected places. 

When man moves at last, he moves quickly. 
The reform having become contagious, will spread 
like wildfire. All opposition and indifference will 
be driven from the face of the earth. The promise 
of universal health, wealth and happiness will be 
fulfilled. 


THE END. 





















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